


Life Will Find a Way

by JoCarthage



Series: Life Will Find Away + Extra Features and Outtakes [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brainwashing, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD written by someone without it, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bucky Barnes, Recovery, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:26:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Retelling of The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier with Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes as Captain America.</p><p>“You can’t be here. I’ll kill you. I can’t fight it forever.”</p><p>“You won’t.” Bucky said. Nothing in his body believed it, but if he was going to tell one lie for the rest of his life, it would be this one.</p><p>“I will.” Steve insisted, voice breaking on the verb. He whispered: “Please.”</p><p>Bucky couldn’t think through the pain, and his muscles didn’t have the strength to bull through it. </p><p>“I trust you.” He said. </p><p>And with that, he laid his head on the concrete, body slacking though it knew it was not safe, eyes drifting. The last thing he saw before sleep took him totally was Steve’s terrified face, and an outstretched hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Will Find a Way

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS: I'm not sure how to tag for this, so please comment and tell me if you know. There are moments that have to do with Hydra's treatment of Steve that might bother someone with a medical trauma trigger. There are moments where Bucky is letting Steve take the lead physically that might be tough for someone with a sexual assault trigger but there is no dub or non-con. Before and while Steve is recovering his memory, he hits Bucky, which could trigger someone with experience or fears around domestic violence. There are also some unhelpful therapists, but I'm not sure there's a widely-known warning for that, so I'll just say it here.
> 
> More generally, this fic includes violence, war-fighting, memory loss, manipulation, all of the things we saw in the movies. I think if you were ok with the movies' content, this fic should not be more triggering than they were. Please, please, please let me know if I'm wrong and I'll update the tags. I'm also as always happy to answer questions about specific scenes if you think it might be heading somewhere triggering and want to check.
> 
> On a happier note, I've posted Bucky's letter to Steve (http://archiveofourown.org/works/2222310) and some outtakes that didn't quite fit the fic that you might like.

“No!”  

Bucky and Steve’s shouts twined around each other, the only parts of them touching as he snapped away from the train. Steve’s face twisted into a rictus of pain that was for several long seconds more real to Bucky than the fall. Bucky tried to twist his body around so he could see where he was falling. He tried to hold his limbs away from his core, and relax, following his parachute training. _You can do this, Buck._ Steve’s tags were tight around his neck, and terribly cold.

He thought for a bare moment he might manage it. He was falling into the center of what could be a deep drift, if he could keep from suffocating long enough to climb out, then follow the river back to the village—

In the middle of that drift was a jagged outcropping of rock. It sheered his arm off. Pain escorted him out of the world for 70 years.

—

His first clear memory when was the absence of expected pain. 

“Good morning, or should I say, afternoon.” A smile.

“Where am I.” His throat felt rough. He shivered under the tight sheet.

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

His hand flew to his neck, but the tags were still there. But something else wasn’t right. He flipped through his senses and caught it—the ball game. _Share the peanuts, you jerk._

He fled, ducking through the door and past what he could only assume were Hydra agents.

Nick Fury caught him, guided him back through alleys he didn’t recognize, and wasn’t that a kick in the teeth. Shepherded like a lost lamb, too star-blazed to find his own way around his own damn city.

Weeks of medical care, tests and evaluations. Hours of questions about what Zola and Hydra had done that he skirted with the same flat tone he had 70 years earlier. A shiny new arm with Stark Industries stamped on the inside of the wrist and more strength than he knew how to handle. SHIELD tutors and no small amount of Googling got him closer to caught-up on the world. It might have gone smoother, he might have fallen into a new, second life, if they hadn’t finally told him what happened to Steve on his third day.

Days, not even a week after he’d fallen, Steve had _died_. He was dead. Underwater where not even that Howard in his megalomania could find him.

Bucky mostly stayed inside after that. He refused a commission into regular service, letting them call him a consultant and make him a talking point, but not taking point anywhere. His world seemed grayer than that snowbank in Austria.

—

It didn't happen often, but sometimes Bucky dreamed of their past. Tonight, it was late summer in the sun-drenched first month of their sharing an apartment in 1939 Brooklyn.

It was a hot, humid, and stinky that summer. Through their wide-open window they could hear the sounds of a thousand people within throwing distance of a regulation baseball, and the hum of half-a-dozen radios carrying the news from Poland.

Steve was lying on his back on the hardwood floor with his eyes closed. Bucky was sitting in their one chair at a safe distance, legs curled up, giving himself no room to reach out. Steve was shirtless, arms raised high above his head, breathing until his skinny chest lifted, pulling his entire back up off the floor. Then he let the air hiss out between his teeth as he drifted back down.

These exercises were prescribed pro bono by the crackpot doctor down the street. Bucky thought they were worth about what they’d paid for it, but there wasn’t a chance he’d share that with Steve, who’d looked so hopeful when he’d been handed the pamphlet.

Bucky’d kept his hands to himself through this routine a dozen afternoons before. Maybe it was the heat, or the war in Europe, but he just couldn’t this time. He had been building up the will to stand for the last 10 breaths, but even that he couldn’t do. He slid off the chair and down to his knees. Steve’s eyes opened to follow him, but he kept breathing and moving, gaze steady.

Bucky crawled until he could see the sweat on Steve’s upper lip, the tick-tick-tick-tick of his heart beating against the thin skin of his chest, hear the whistling of his breath as it came out of his throat. Steve’s eyes were wide, but when he licked his upper lip it felt like permission.

Bucky crouched over his prone body, bringing his cheek close but just slightly above his moving chest, facing away from Steve, following the movement up and down. The distance between his cheek and his chest felt like eternity, like an excuse, like a demand.

Steve’s breath stuttered and Bucky pulled back until his slim hand caught the back of his neck, yanking his face up and capturing his lips. Bucky’s hand was on his chest, pressing the breath in and then lifting up, feeling it rise under his fingers.

He pulled back to look at his hand, at their joined movement. He flicked his eyes to Steve’s face and the ice blue caught him. He felt the world shift, confirm, accept the demand, filling in cracks he never known he was stepping over.

Bucky slipped his head down to listen to Steve’s heart. He’d never been able to before and it eased a tension he’d kept in his chest since they'd met in the snow 10 winters ago. Each beat, each slightly-uneven lub-dub, let him know Steve was alive. Wonderfully, warmly, once-and-for-always alive.

“Get back up here,” Steve said, though Bucky heard the shape of the words forming low in Steve’s chest before they came out of his mouth. He shook his head, knowing his longer-than-regulation hair would be tickling Steve under his chin.

As he expected, he won a laugh, Steve tossing his own head to try and escape the tickle. Steve pulled his knees up, pushing Buck’s mouth to his, kissing him and slowly raising his arms from the floor and wrapping them around the back of his body. He couldn’t care if his arms were as thin as Harlem matchsticks, when they came around him, he felt safer than he’d ever felt outside of them.

He eased down further into the kiss, exploring the shape and softness and wetness of it. Steve guided him, his hands going soft and hard, sweeping from the top of his pants up to his hairline.

“Mmmm,” Steve said, pulling back to roll Bucky’s hair through his fingers. “You gonna get this cut anytime soon, or do I need to buy us some scissors?”

Bucky huffed, “I’ll get it cut if we join the war.” He could feel Steve slow, the memory of that morning’s recruiting office visit surfacing. Then he shook his head and ducked down, starting to suck a mark high up on Bucky’s neck.

“Hey—“ Bucky said, “What am I supposed to tell the guys at work?”

“Tell them you got a dame; they’ll believe you,” Steve said, voice low and mumbling against his skin. Bucky shivered at the difference between the tight, hot suction and the coolness of his speaking breath.

“I don’t want to have a dame,” he said, thought coming clear to him, “I want them to know about you.” He pulled back, bracing his palms flat on either side of Steve’s head. “Because you’re it for me.” Steve froze, then he lowered his eyes and went back to building his hickey.

“That’s not something we can do, but it’s kind of you to say,” he began to move his hand down Bucky’s back, slipping fingers beneath his suspenders and running them down to his waistband. Bucky raised his hand to curve behind Steve’s head, giving him the support he wouldn’t ask for. Steve’s hair was fine and soft as it had always looked. He let the strands weave around his fingers, let himself feel the fragile bone of Steve’s skull.

“And you're it for me too,” came out against the tender skin of his neck.

Bucky dipped his head down to take the lobe of his ear between his teeth. Steve’s intake of breath as all the encouragement he needed, and he began to explore the curve of his ear with his lips. He could smell Steve’s lye-soap, the one in the bathroom they had shared for a month of careful towels and downcast eyes.

Bucky rolled them over, taking Steve with him as he found a comfortable position on the floor, pulling him into a half-straddle over his hips. He leaned up for a kiss, rolling into the pressure. He would never get enough of this, the skin of Steve’s back, the summmer-warmth of his mouth; he couldn’t imaging this ending.

—

He woke up to the knock.

Fury stood in the doorway of his small room. Blue walls, a narrow bed, a stack of books from the SHIELD library cart and the second-half of the twentieth century. He was holding a folder, opened outwards. In the sleeve was a portrait of Steve when he was small and a picture of that damn blue cube.

“Why did you go back for it? After everything—“ _we lost, I lost,_ “How could you be so _stupid._ ” 

Bucky’s voice was hoarse from disuse, and Fury looked away, looked at the paste-textured walls of his room. He returned his stare, then left, stooping to lay the file laid across Bucky’s lintel, blocking the door.

—

He’d never had Steve’s gift for charismatic leadership, but the army had taught him how to manage a team. He answered the call. He even agreed to a muted version of Steve’s spangle, to call himself Captain America for the fight. Looking “old-fashioned” made sense, since he was playing Steve’s avatar, and he didn’t mind the balding man who’d given him the suit. When he’d handed over a shield—not real vibranium, but bullet-proof enough—his condolences had seemed genuine. Bucky thanked him, and gotten dressed in the back of the jet.

The damn thing itched.

He was on the helicarrier and took a measure of his people, standing with his hands behind his back. _You almost look like a proper Sergeant._ He found Stark’s cynicism refreshing, and after a few mutually damning comments about Howard, he knew they’d work together just fine. In Romanov’s eyes he saw something, a darkness he didn’t quite plumb and so couldn't quite trust, but Fury trusted her and so that would be fine for now. Banner was an unknown, but _you gotta give people a chance to surprise you, Buck._

And Thor—well, he’d dealt with stunning, blond, virtuous men before.

—

Minutes after Stark declared he was hacking SHIELD, Bucky was jogging down the hallway. He started out doing his best Elderly-Hero-Kicking-the-Tires impression to the first few agents who stared, but then got serious. He was here, creeping around because _You need to be sure of who you’re fighting for, Buck._

Bucky swept his eyes down the empty grey hallway of the helicarrier one last time before breaking into the only locked storage room. He started opening crates, taking pleasure in the easy force that came with his bionic arm. 

_You can’t use your strength for the wrong people_. When large men from the neighborhood had come to Bucky, seeing if he wanted to make some easy cash helping them settle some debts that’s what Steve had said.

He’d never told Steve he’d gone to meet with them later, thin white shirt hastily tucked in and hair pushed back. They needed the money. He’d stood at the top of their basement address, and smelled the air forced out of the darkness. 

He’d turned tail and run. The choice had led to months of dangerous stares, but he couldn’t live with any other option, knowing he’d have Steve’s eyes to meet every night.

He’d promised to keep the two of them fed, so he did it the hard way. He’d sweated with the other day-workers, carrying other people’s toys and boxes and carts, luggage and anything else that needed loading and unloading. He’d used his hands, but mostly his back and shoulders, and brought back half-envelopes of dollars and tens for their rent.

The smell of that basement was stronger and stronger as he pulled out weapons powered by the same blue light he saw in his dreams. He could see he wasn’t the only one who’d been tempted down the wrong path.

—

He slammed the weapon on the table and turned, pushed into Fury’s space: “How _dare_ you?” he hissed.

He’d never ranked above a sergeant, never been in a room with generals and presidents aching to shake his hand. He’d never learned the deference of a junior-ranking man before superiors, because he only ever known one superior, and he wasn’t here. _Careful, Buck._ Fury’s glare did nothing for him.

“If you ever want to see me in this uniform again, if you _ever_ want Steve Rogers’ memory to grace your propaganda flyers or email blasts again, you will destroy every single one of these. This is not the America we fought for.”

He glared up into the man’s face. Fury was taking in a breath to take him down to size, take him out of the game, when Stark meandered up, tapping a checkbook against his thigh.

“You know,” he said, “Stark Industries could be persuaded to develop alien-specific war fighting technology,” He tipped his head: “for SHIELD use exclusively of course.” His face turned thoughtful.

“But, I can’t commit us to entering a market already saturated by alien tech.” This smile looked a lot nastier than it did on television. 

Bucky liked it. 

The room teetered on the razor’s edge, Romanov’s body angled toward’s Fury and Bruce’s towards Bucky. Thor stepped into the middle, saying:  
  
“There are gifts of Asgard I can convey to you to ensure you feel safe from our people. If there are others like my brother whose wrathful and wretched nature drives them to this world, you will be able to defend yourselves.”

The room inhaled, and into the tension Bucky dropped, quiet as he’d ever spoken: “Get rid of the Tesseract; destroy everything it gave you. Captain’s orders.”

Fury’s kept eye contact for a long moment, then nodded. _Good on you, Buck._ He walked out. Moments later Stark reported an all-hands had gone out, canceling all Stage 2 production and forming a disposal task force.

—

Loki’s plan was still in motion, and even with Romanov’s friend back from his gruesome mind-control, they were struggling against the tide. When Bucky told the uniforms to keep people off the streets, he could feel Steve’s hand on his shoulder, fingers digging in just enough to let him know he’d done good. He hoisted the fake shield and yanked that ridiculous cowl over his face. Stark’s friend Rhodey was more than welcome to being the patriotic symbol, he just wanted his sniper blacks back.

The aliens were something else. He could imagine Steve drawing them, but no, he would be out here, commanding the troops, getting shot at, giving big speeches like he was born to do. Bucky kept the team together, giving Romanov point on directing focus, barely convincing Hulk to leave Thor alone. _A bag of cats, jerk; a big ole bag of cats._

In the end: they survived. 

When Hulk’s roar brought Tony back to the world, Bucky felt his sweat begin to cool, his body knowing it was finally safe again.

The laughter of his team echoed like that of the Commandoes after a midnight raid. He kept his eyes open long enough to make sure everyone was accounted for and seated, that Barton had Natasha to keep him company, then leaned over on the table, head down, ears keeping track. He tuned back in when they were closing out, and Barton muttered—“What hotel in the city would take us, after seeing this damage?” There was no question about splitting up. Their shared wounds were just scabbing over.

He pulled himself up and a quick glance at Stark as all he needed.

“Let’s crash at Tony’s,” he said, “He’s got the room.”

  
Tony moaned and groaned but he did have the room. Bucky went to sleep, hand wrapped around someone else’s dog tags.

—

It was easy to say no to Tony, the next morning, and the next. To move to his own real place, this time out in the city, funded by his military pension and the beauty of compound interest. He trained, he showed up to corral Namor’s crabs back into the sea,he debriefed, he went home. 

When Natasha asked how he was, 6 months after New York and 3 after they’d last seen each other, all he could think to say was:  
  
“I’m taking an art class and reading some more recent military history.”

A few weeks later, when Clint asked:

“I’m teaching a self-defense class for neighborhood kids.”

He kept the tags underneath his shirt, keeping them in his hand during his physical, hiding them in his pocket during his mandatory therapy. He talked around Steve, and let people think he just missed his friend. It was as close to the truth as he could muster.

Tony didn’t ask—he just came by, sat on his couch, drank his beer, and complained about SHIELD. He said these visits were to do diagnostics on the arm, but after the first few weeks he stopped bringing his toolbox.

And when Rhodey asked him, over beers that worked as well as they had during the war (which is to say, not nearly at all):

“I’m taking a lot of walks, getting to know my city again.”

He tried not to dwell. He failed. He logged a lot of time eating in places where he could watch reconstruction of the city. Seeing such damage disappear helped.

Everywhere he went, he saw him. In Rhodey’s patriotism, his students’ size, Natasha’s side-eyes, Pepper’s hair.

And when Bruce asked him, hip propped against the door of his lab on a visit to Stark tower:

“I’m doing the therapy, but it doesn’t…” He flexed his metal hand, listening to the electricity hum so close to his blood.

“Yeah,” Bruce had said, and they gone back to being quiet in each other’s company.

Bucky had out-waited half-a-dozen therapists. They came off the same: casually interested in him, but really gunning to be the one to crack the man out of time. He didn’t want to be cracked.

It was all: “What do you remember from the war?”  
  
Not: “Who do you miss like a bloody limb?”  
  
They asked: “How did you feel today?”

Not: “Whose face hovers over every one of your dreams?”

He’d met one guy through a speaking gig who seemed to have his head on straight. He’d served, done something with planes. Wilson. He’d suggested writing a letter to a friend from the war, trying to explain. [He’d done it](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2222310), and hadn’t been able to leave the apartment for days. He didn’t know if that meant the exercise worked or didn’t. Bucky’d meant to follow-up, but hadn’t gotten to it yet. He kept his card in his wallet.

So, when Thor asked, he said: “I think I’m ready to go back to SHIELD. I could use a mission.”

He never showed anyone the art book he’d been filling, or the Captain’s Orders homework sheets for his students, or the letter. If any of his friends could read his mind, the low-hum of those 9 months would have sounded like a repeat of one word.

—

The damn thing still itched.

“I’m getting tired of cleaning up Fury’s messes,” he told Nat, adjusting his shoulder strap. He jumped down with the rest of the team onto the deck of the _Lemurian Star_. The report of his rifle served as the only proof of his presence to the waiting pirates. He put two slugs in the back of Batroc’s head before he turned. The Strike team felled the rest of his deck-side lackeys. 

When he caught Natasha going through the files, he leaned over next to her:  
  
“What did you find?” he asked. There was no question about her motives—they shared a dislike of obscuring organizations.

She yanked out the hard drive and slipped it in to her belt pocket:  
  
“You should ask Fury about it.” He was about to take that for the dismissal it sounded like, circle back later, until she repeated herself, eyes hard on his.

“You should ask Fury about it.”

Then she turned, feet light as she walk towards their ride back to the Triskelion.

—

“You can’t help lying to us, can you?”

Bucky’s hip was propped against the doorway, calling out over Fury’s unexpectedly large office. He felt the weight of the fake-out shield on his back. He’d dropped by without changing. He waited a few beats, eyes steady. _You’re really going to talk to the Commander like that?_ Bucky grimaced. _Though, if he fires you, you can go back to working on your brush-stroke._

He could hear a smaller Steve’s laugh, sound hissing between the chuckles like air being let out of balloon. _On the other hand, you sure like being able to buy whatever brand of liquor you want_.

“What was on the disk Nat brought you?” 

At the one-eyed glare, he hooked a grin and continued: “It’s something about the satellites, right?”

Fury stood and walked over to the middle of the room. Bucky watched him from the doorway.

“Secure office.” Fury said, and the door Bucky was propping open slammed on his butt, pushing him into the suddenly dark office. He withheld a yelp. He watched Fury push the drive into a slot.

“Read file.” Fury commanded. It didn't work.

“Decrypt file.”

_“You do not have permission.”_

“Authorization code: Fury, Nicholas J.”

“Authorization rejected.”

Bucky’s eyes went wide. He didn’t have a complete internal org-chart for SHIELD on hand, but Fury would be at the top of any version of it. He could see the tension in the line of Fury’s summer leather duster.

“On whose authority?”   
  
_“Fury, Nicholas J.”_

“What the actual fuck?” Bucky asked, and Fury turned to yank the hard drive out.

“I don’t know, but until I do, we have a few things we’re going to need to take care of,” said the Director grimly. They took the elevator to the highest floor Bucky had ever seen someone punch in and stood, waiting for Pearce.

—

“Pearce seemed to be confident in that project, what did you call it, Intention?”  
  
“Project Insight: Catching Assholes Before They Fuck Shit Up.” Fury said. “Entirely because you’re a pain in my ass, I’m going to let you follow me to the parking garage.”

Fury took them through side-corridors, until they were deep below ground and the final in a series of anonymous hallways opened into a massive hangar. _We must be under the Potomac._ Bucky took in as much detail as he could.

“What is this?” he asked, as Fury force-marched them past welding sparks and hurried builders.

“It’s what we need to protect ourselves.” Bucky didn’t miss that Fury’s eyes were close on the faces of the people working around them, and he shut up. _Op-sec is no laughing matter._

Minutes after, they were driving, shield tucked behind Bucky’s seat. Bucky tried to pry out information on Insight while Fury mostly ignored him and stealth-texted Maria. He got that there were some intense lasers, that Stark had helped build them, and that Fury was really pushing the “innocent until proven guilty” envelope. When the cops pulled up, Bucky felt the same chill he did whenever the uniforms had walked down his block. _That’s not fair, Buck, what about Jane’s brother? He wasn’t on the take._ Bucky shook his head, ear’s focusing in time to hear Fury’s deadpan:

“You want to see my lease?” Bucky rolled his eyes. Some things were as fucked up as they ever were.

When the car slammed into the other side of their Suburban, Bucky was thrown into Fury’s lap, metal prosthesis slamming into the Director’s arm. He heard a crack. He pushed himself up, crawling into the back of the car to arm-up while Fury handled the initial response.

His ears were full of static, mind focused in a way it hadn’t been in months. _Get up and go, solider._ He yanked the Uzy out of the back compartment and kept it below their attacker’s sight-lines.

Fury gave the sign and he sprayed and prayed, taking out the first line of attackers. They got the car moving again, and Bucky laid down the Uzy, _safety on_ , and pulled out a rifle. _A bit of a one-trick pony, aren’t we, Buck._ Bucky laid out across the back seat, bracing as Fury swerved, eyes on the 3 cars he could count chasing them. No one showing any regard for civilians. _Unacceptable_.

They were making headway, getting closer to the exit Fury’s car promised would get them “Off the grid, dammit!” He’d just sighted right between the arches of a driver’s unibrow, when he heard a muttered: 

“Shit.”  
  
He’d never heard that tone from Fury, and so he folded up into a crouch and looked out the front window. He saw a man in black, standing squarely in their path, shooting some kind of disc at them. The car flipped forwards, Bucky’s body flew against the front car-seat, shoulder crunching but not breaking. His tendons screamed and his nerves sizzled. _Duck your head when you fall, it will keep what brains you have safe_.

“Fuck,” he heard Fury say mussily, as the truck rocked to a stop on its roof. He followed his line of sight through the cracked left-side class. The man in black had some kind of medical mask over his mouth and was coming towards them.

He moved with cold efficiency and held violence in his broad, uncovered arms. The sway in his athletic step that projected surety of success.

Bucky glanced at Fury, but the man was still groggy from slamming his head on the steering wheel. _You’re on point._

He turned and kicked at the loosely attached window, puling himself out, with a rifle in one hand and the shield in the other. He docked the shield on his back as he stood aiming with a broad enough stance to make clear he was not prey, he was a fellow predator. His metal arm felt lighter than it had been in months and his tags warm on his chest, as he watched the masked man walk towards him. He squared his shoulders and tried to look like too much trouble for whatever this guy was being paid for this gig.

30 feet between him and he took in what he could through the sighting on the rifle. His opponent was armed but not aiming, 2 pistols on his thigh, some kind of automatic propped on his shoulder, knives in his belt. He stopped walking, standing still and staring.

Bucky glanced up to his face, keeping his crosshairs his center of mass. His eyes. There was something about his eyes.

He didn’t have Nat’s cool detachment, or Clint’s fuck-em-up glee, or even Bruce’s mania. He looked, blank. Drugged, even. Like he wasn’t present, was dancing to—no, was being pulled by strings someone else’s playlist. Something of sympathy cracked in Bucky’s abdomen, but he cased over it, roughening himself against feeling. Director Fury wasn’t going to die in downtown D.C., and if dead-eyed blond made an issue of that, he would have to die.

Bucky popped out the shield so it was clear and not hidden behind him for the first time. The man didn’t move, his eyes didn’t waver, but Bucky detected a firmer grip on the machine gun, saw his shoulder swing back to reduce the exposure of his body.

“Stop.” Bucky called. “You can stop now.”

The man started walking.

“I won’t let you take him; leave while you still can.”  
  
His step grew in bounce, and Bucky realized he had shifted to walking on the balls of his feet, getting ready to sprint. He still hadn’t drawn down, still holding his automatic swung over his shoulder like the go bag of a soldier in a forward-deployed camp.

20 feet and Bucky heard the whine of something behind him and the smell of ozone sliced through the air. He hoped Fury was doing something to save himself, because the more he saw of this man, the harder a win he expected this to be.

The man was within 10 feet when he dropped the gun over his shoulder, and sprinted. 

Bucky caught his roundhouse punch on the shield. The force of it drove him back— _look what my shield can do, Buck—_ and he twisted, using the man’s momentum to whip around and slam the curve of it against his shoulder. He slammed him again, and again, only to catch a kick at his knee that took him down. He shoved forward, hooking his non-shield arm around the man’s ankle, trapping his stumble and taking him full-length to the ground. Bucky slid the shield out of the way, towards the Suburban as he turned into the fall.

The masked man pushed up on the sides of his knees, army crawling towards the Suburban. Bucky flung himself onto the man’s back, shoving his metal arm under his chin. He almost got the grip, head ducked behind his shoulder to ward off the blows that were raining down, when the man’s hand caught his elbow, pushing it up and over his face, catching and pulling the mask off as he went. 

Bucky tried to reestablish his choke-hold, but his opponent rolled in his grip, going to his back, leg around his waist, metal arm pressing against his hands as Bucky pressed them into the fragile front of his throat.

Then his eyes found him.

“Steve?”

“Who the hell is Steve?” the other man choked out.

Bucky’s body flew away from the Suburban as the other man shoved his hips sideways and levered his arm at the same time. Bucky slammed into the side of the overturned car, and pulled himself up from the ground, repeating:  
  
“Steve?” 

As he staggered over to where he was leaning into the window of the truck. He heard him huff, and straighten, and then pick-up something from the ground beside the Suburban. _The shield_. The man held it in one hand, not pulling it over his arm, just gripping it with his fingers. Bucky kept walking, his hands open at his sides. 

He saw the other man glance at him, a quick, furtive connection, before yanking something out of one of his pockets and throwing it to the ground. Bucky shouted into the cloying smoke, but he was gone.

—

He was yanking the last of the ammo out of the back of the overturned—and Fury-free—Suburban when a van pulled up and out piled the Strike team. The men he’d commanded for months had him kneeling, gun to the back of his head, and then hustled into the vehicle. He couldn’t make himself understood.

From their shouting, they were setting him up as the leader of the attack. They handcuffed him but didn’t give him a seatbelt. His body moved with the curves the car took on the road.

“It was Steve,” he said to himself.

“What are you muttering about?” said the helmeted agent, a woman on his left.

“Nothing.” he said.

She flipped open her taser/laser-cutter to reiterate her question and he raised his metal arm. Then she shoved the whining electrical light into the chest of her companion.

She pulled the helmet off—“That thing was squeezing my brain”—and at the next stop Hill had carved them a hole into the underbelly of the city.

Hill took him through along the sidelines of the metro and under the sewer grates. Once they’d slowed to a walk asking:

“What were you saying about Captain Rogers?”

“The man who attacked us, he had Steve’s face.”

“That’s not possible.” she said, and was silent for long minutes.

Bucky asked: “Is Fury alive?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said. 

They came to a wide door, looking like the edges of WWII-era bunker. Something a paranoid ambassador might have built in his basement. Bucky followed her in, and found Nat and Fury.

He had a lot of questions, but only one that mattered: 

“What was Steve doing there?” 

He walked toward Fury, standing in his space, hands in controlled fists

“You don’t need to know.” Fury started, but then Nat put her hand on his arm, moving her body between them. She grabbed Bucky’s hand, then yanked her shirt up, putting his fingertips on the scar-tissue on her hip, skin rough.

He froze as she described the pale ghost out of Soviet legend. A man who’d killed enough for 3 average assassin’s lifetimes, whose dedication to the Soviet state had made him a case study for her handlers. Who’d trained her.

Fury took over when she trailed off describing her betrayal in Paris—“We had so few choices then, and we were so young,”—Fury’s face was set, his hands in his coat pockets.

“He was in cold storage after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but sometime in the early nineties he was transferred to another’s organization’s custody. Romanov now believes it was under their orders he’d attacked her in Iraq. I think, no, after today, I _know_ it was the same group that attacked us.”  
  
“And who would that be?” Bucky asked, head reeling.

“Hydra.”

“I don’t understand, how did he not break free, how are they still using him?”

Nat’s face closed and her voice low and flat.

“He doesn’t know he’s Steve, he’s had his memory wiped and been reprogrammed.”

Bucky choked out: “Then who does he think he is?”  
  
“The Winter Soldier.”

—

Bucky and Nat drove north to New Jersey, where the protection of the drive from the Lemurian seemed to be coming from. Bucky heard Fury order him to leave Steve alone until this fight was done, but it wasn't going to happen.

Bucky drove the second shift and let the keys click against his knee, tapping his metal middle finger and thumb together in a tense rhythm. He knew that at any moment Steve—the Soldier—something in between—could come crashing back into this mission. He needed to know more:

“What was he like?”  
  
“The Soldier?”

Silence.

Then: “He trained me in the Red Room, before he was sold to Hydra. I didn’t know him before, but the basics are part of the SHIELD founding story they force feed up all new recruits. I think when you knew him, he was a good man. They hadn’t left much of kindness or sweetness in him, when I met him. They took his dislike of bullies and warped it, forged it into a visceral hatred of the U.S. as the biggest bully on the block. They took his physical skills and made him a killer.” Her voice was cold, but it got thawed and wavered here.

“He didn't kill me in Iraq. He could have, it was within parameters, but he chose to let me leave, wounded, but not dead. That was the most mercy he could squeeze between who he used to be and who they made him.”

“Do you think he remembers who he was?”  
  
Nat took a long time in answer, but finally did: “He might, sometimes. When I would wake up in the mornings, I would remember more and then the conditioning would start. It’s possible. But Bucky, I wouldn't bank on it. There may be nothing left.”

A few minutes of silence, broken only by the sound of the wheel creaking in Bucky’s two hands. Nat’s voice was low when she asked:

“What was he like?”

“He always had these bruises on his wrists and the side of his face after a fight, because when bigger guys went after him, they’d hit him like a woman, not another guy. No one ever wanted to raise fists to a guy they could sit on and lose.” Bucky kept his eyes forwards.

“But Steve, he would always get his boxing fists up. And if there was someone else in the fight, they always had to be behind him. You don’t know the number of guys I had to knock out from over his head, because he wouldn’t get out of my way in a fight.”

Bucky’s small smile said more than any of his words, and Nat let the description wash over her.

“He was in the wrong body, and I could always see it, but after the serum, he could wear the boots he’d always been trying on. It let him be who he really was. And he was amazing.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”  
  
“I’ve read the reports. He took the plane down over Greenland to save Brooklyn, to save the America he only saw from over the top of USO stage lights.”

Natasha pushed farther: “You were together during the war for some time, after he got the serum but before he went down?”  
  
Bucky nodded, neck stiff, eyes on the long, empty nighttime road. “I was fucked up from what happened to me, from what Hydra did, but I kept trying to protect him when I couldn’t stand on my own two feet. He protected me right back. We figured it out. And then I lost him.”

His fingers rose to tags around his neck, slipping one finger between them, feeling the warm metal. He could sense her eyes on them, and he felt like he was stepping over a razor’s edge, the difference between who people assumed he and Steve were, and what they had been to each other. In the quiet of the car, he didn’t see much of a point in keeping the two separate anymore. He started:

“He gave me these the first night out of the Hydra camp. We stole these tents with Tesseract-energy heating the middle, so we wouldn’t freeze. There weren’t enough for all of us so everyone paired up, though the guys wanted to give Steve his own. He declined,” Bucky laughed, and it felt real. “He even offered to sleep outside when we thought one of the worst-hurt guys wouldn’t get a spot. The others insisted though.”

He took a breath, “I was in a bad way, particularly once we were alone after lights-out. Flinching, the shakes, couldn’t turn my back on the door. I couldn’t sleep or breath, and he wasn’t sure what to do. First he tried wrapping me up in blankets, but my teeth chattered so much he was worried I’d bite my tongue off. I wouldn’t look at him—it was too much too different too fast, you know?”

“He tried to give me hot water to drink, and his rations. I nearly shouted at him, he was mother-henning and I hated it. I hated feeling weak. I barely recognized him, though it was the most him he’d ever been. Finally, I snapped one too many time and left. I started shaking worse, sweating and cold, but just curled up, hating myself, hating what had been done to me, hating the entire fucking war, hating pushing him away.”

“I had my eyes closed, I was drifting in and out, but I heard the tent flap open up. I tried to get up, tried to get my arms in front of my face, but the light caught his eyes. And then I knew: Steve was here. He was safe. He was fine. I was with him. And I sat back down and pulled my blanket away, making a space for him on the cot, if he wanted it. Steve’s face had been hard, harsh, broken-looking if you knew him and stoic if you didn’t. But then it just, crumbled. He was small and lost and near-as-much done in as I was. He shucked his jacket and sat down, just the two of us in our under-shirts. And he just wrapped me in this hug.”

Bucky’s eyes came back to the road and the steady profession of mile-marked along the side of the night-dark road.

“When we calmed down a bit, he took my hands and put them around his tags. He helped me pull them over his head and in the same gesture brought them over mine. He didn’t let go until they were around my neck.”

“He said something like, _Rings are hard to come by out here, but I do have these. I do._ ”

“I said it back to him, ‘I do,’ and he smiled and patted the tags on my chest.”

He darted his eyes over to see her reaction to this, but she kept her marble stare going. Nothing bad, nothing good. He wanted to stop talking, but he needed to say this:

“It wasn't that uncommon, guys sharing tags, but it was more a brothers thing. It wasn’t about being brothers with us. It hadn’t been since we were teens.” _That wasn’t so bad, Buck._ The secret breathed with them in the air and didn’t smother anyone.

He hurried to finish: “We didn’t get the time we wanted. We didn’t want to plan for the future—too many of the guys would have no future, and it felt, unfair, to assume we’d do better than them.” He let the tags drop to his chest again. “But when we were shipping out on a mission, he’d pat my chest,” Bucky pressed his hand over the tags, “and it just looked like a friendly thing if anyone saw, but it wasn’t. I’d do the same. It was our promise.”

She turned in her seat, hitching her leg on the seat. She considered him:

“He’s probably being reprogrammed as we speak.”

Bucky felt his bones turn to melting ice. He looked away from what those words meant, didn’t let them convert text to meaning in his head. Focused on the road, the lane dividers slipping under the body of the car.

He jumped as she lifted a hand to his shoulder, contact unnecessary and unexpected: “Look, there are, differences in the ties people form and what they can do to bring someone back. Some ties are stronger than others.”

She took her hand off and he forced his shoulders to settle. Her voice was clinical: “How far did it go, this beyond-brotherhood?”

Bucky stared at the empty midnight road, breathing, trying to find the words he’d only shared with the person he felt them with. She turned to face the window, as if that distance would save them both pain from what was about to come:

“I slept with him, as part of my training.” He startled, eyes off the road, on curve of her jaw where she looked at the trees. “We were ordered to: him to teach and me to learn. There weren’t a lot of options for gentleness, or preferences. But there were things I think weren’t part of the training that he did. Kind things. Things they wouldn’t have thought to program in, things they wouldn’t have known they could take away.”

Bucky felt like he’d swallowed a pinned-grenade, and the wrong move could jostle the switch. He tried to breath, but it came shallower and shallower. _Breath, just breath_. _We can get through this._

He felt his chest unhitch, felt like he’d gotten a lung back, and nodded. He hooked the tags out; held them.

“If he kept some parts of himself, that would make it easier to bring him back.” he said, slowly. He took a breath and said: “Our ties were as deep as they come, maybe he can use them to pull himself out.”

“Maybe,” Natasha said, and then she let it drop.

They switched positions at the next rest stop, and Bucky leaned his head against the window and his rifle against his knee. He went back to that night in the tent, focusing on one square inch of the experience at a time. He saw himself shivering in that tent, rough army blankets around his shoulders, feet in the boots they’d stolen off a Hydra corpse, vision getting stronger than the way the streetlights ticked off the quarter-miles as they sped along. He felt the twist of betrayal, of Steve’s new body, his confusing authority.

He felt the melting relaxation when he accepted it, when he really saw Steve for the first time in that tent doorway. He felt his arm around his shoulders when he came back into the tent. He felt so warm. He saw the way the lack of light threw them into greys, like some living moment out of Steve’s sketch-book. 

He tasted the skin behind his ear, over his shoulder. The new swells of him. The hurts in his own body, and the moment when he stopped feeling them. He felt Steve’s wide palms on his skin and crossed his legs. He remembered worrying about the sound of the sheets, about the rhythmic movement of the cots. He’d rolled them carefully onto the drop-cloth, which lacked both padding and uncared-for springs to give them away.

He remembered thinking of those sounds, trying to hear what they might sound like from the outside, and then the minute he stopped worrying. The minute he let minutes go, stopped counting, developed an entirely knew way to tell time. By breaths. By touches. By minutes he held his breath, this hand, this thigh, this arm. This man, in his arms, over him, under him. This protector who he’d protected, this man. 

Steve had been his sun. Golden to Bucky’s eyes since they’d met, scrawny and underfed with bruised wrists. He’d never dimmed, and even when suddenly everyone could see it, it didn’t matter. The war had made him a moon, a reflection of someone else’s idea of brightness. But here, in the dark of his memory, between Bucky’s two good hands, he burned and he burned and he burned.

—

Bucky’d been to Lehigh before, for his training. He’d run by that flagpole, slept in those barracks. He was pacing out the steps to the mess hall, wracking his brain, when he realized the building was in the wrong place.

He recognized the photos, Howard and that bastard, and Peggy. He let Natasha lead them into the pit, eyes and ears on their 6, rifle close. 

The lights came on, and he was ready to joke at the dinosaur of a system they were a part of, when a voice from hell came out of the speakers.

His knees hit the floor. Zola’s digitalized soul _knew_ him. It started to go after what he had left inside his skull. Hands over his ears, nose crushing against his knees, he tried to drown the voice. _You’re ok, buddy_ , said a voice from beside a sweat-drenched camp bed: _you’re bigger than this._ He focused on the weight of the tags around his neck, but could feel something rising in him, something that just needed a key to unlock him.

Another voice chimed in, listing assassinations it claimed the Winter Soldier could take credit for: Kennedy; Fury; Stark.

The intelligence on the computer tried code word after code word, trigger phrase after trigger phrase. Natasha shouted and tried to pull the speakers, and he started to lose the weight of the tags, hearing the whine of the instruments in the spinning of the tape-decks as Natasha shouted at the computer. He could see himself standing, killing her, killing everyone he cared about. Never saving Steve. Helpless, hopeless, and then—

Silence. She’d gotten it to stop, by finally ripping out the tape of every machine. She stood, breathing heavily as he looked up at her, face a mask of remembered pain. Her phone shrilled and—

“40 seconds to impact. Barnes. Barnes! Get up!”  


He couldn’t get up, he could still hear Zola. Still hear that drone, that whine. Natasha slapped the back of his head, and he just ducked lower. _You can make it through this, buddy_ he heard Steve, just like he’d heard him every night on the slab.

Then he felt a yank on the dog-tags and he reared up, only to see—Nat. Nat, hair wild around her face, bits of tap still around her bleeding fingers, shouting they had 10 seconds and he had to _Get up, Bucky!_

He stood, her shoving him into the gap beneath the floor and covering his body with hers as the missiles came roaring down. The smell of burning plastic closed a door in Bucky’s soul that Zola’s voice had opened. He could breath again, acrid though the air was.

Somewhere between her suit being flame retardant and them angling their bodies towards the wall, they survived.

Once they were sure there were no more, they pushed debris off their backs. They leaned on each other, coughing and hacking uncontrollably. Staggering through the camp, Nat whispered:

“They’re, they’re going to kill them all.” Nat coughed, smoke staining her words.

“What?”

“The machine, the program, it’s Insight. They’re going to kill everyone.”

They staggered through a back fence Barnes had remembered opening onto a quiet neighborhood. A block down, they found a big, sturdy car, too old for electric permission. He smashed the window and left her to stumble her way to the passenger seat as he flipped the unlock. 

“Where’d you learn to steal cars, Barnes?” she wheezed.

“Nazi Germany.”

The heat of the bomb had warped his 21st century phone beyond all recognition, and he racked his brain with ways he could get them to safety with the GPS suctioned to the window. He’d only just gotten used to the one in the damn car. They were begging for a tail on these roads, and were in no shape to face the Soldier.

He got them started on back roads, keeping to the speed limit, keeping the radio on. _Mysterious explosion at decommissioned base—Mayor: ‘Shocked and concerned.’ National Guard present._

They had no way of getting in touch with Fury, and they needed to clean up. Everyone he knew was from SHIELD (Clint, Coulson, Maria), was on assignment (Banner) or off-world (Thor). He had Tony as a back-up, but now he knew Steve might have killed Tony’s parents, he wanted to keep that relationship in the freezer.

They had 2 hours left to get to D.C. by backroads when it came to him:

“I know where we can go.”

Natasha nodded, encouraging him to continue:

“Sam Wilson. He’s a group-leader with the VA. We met at a speaking function. He uh, knew me from the comics and was willing to see past the tights. He’s good people.” Natasha grinned. She’d had her run-ins with being used in Soviet-era comics as well, and wouldn’t get within 50 ft of tights, no matter the mission.

She nodded again, and the aimed for South East D.C.

—

Natasha lifted a phone off of a teenager at a rest stop around dawn. Nearly as good as a burner, she found Sam Wilson’s home address faster than seemed safe. As they closed on the city, Bucky’s mind flipped between Project Insight and what might be happening to Steve at that moment.

They would have to stop Zola’s plan, but needed resources to do it.

—

Wilson let them in, no questions asked. He even had a long-sleeved shirt Bucky could borrow, doing what he could to keep his prosthetic from showing in public. He was gulping down some coffee while giving Wilson the sanitized highlights. The trapped friend, the torture, the memory theft.

“He got you out of a nasty situation and you want to return the favor. To save him.”

Bucky nodded again.

“You know you may not be able to. People aren’t coupons, you can’t really save them.” Bucky blanched, but Wilson continued: “But they can save themselves. You can get him out, but he needs to get his mind out. When he pulled you from that place, were you the same, even close?”

Bucky shook his head.

“When you wanted to be you again, you had to work at it, right? Getting someone out of Hell gives them that space to work in, and that’s a type of saving,” he took a sip of dark coffee “But there are no white knights. Just choices and hard work.”  
  
“He’ll want back. He’ll work at it.” Bucky replied.  
  
“Maybe that will be enough, but you have to be prepared if it isn’t. If this is who he is now. You can chain him and defang him, but he might never want to come back. Some people never get themselves, their sweetness back after surviving what it sounds like he is in the middle of.”

Bucky was about to get up, when Wilson put a hand on his shoulder, ignoring his jump of surprise: “But you can try. And you should. He sounds like he could use your help stitching himself back together.”

—

“You’ve shaped the century.” 

The Winter Soldier’s ears were full of white noise, as always. He could

  * hear directions, 
  * catch faces as they swam past, 



but unless it was over the sights of a gun, nothing in his world was crisp.

His expression and his self were the same: blank. But screaming from under the low numb hum that was him, he heard that man’s voice. He felt:

  * his skin break under his fist, 
  * the shape of his bare ribs give in a gasp
  * his eyes widen
  * the plush of his lips
  * “Steve?”



Some of these images cross-referenced positively with his only memories, but others did not.

The man in his memory came to him with a smell, a shape, that he could not account for. He wanted to know more, needed to know where these deeper connections came from, but he shied away from the punishment those questions would entail. His mind rounded around the possibility, protecting him from the choice. But he was so curious.

“The man on the bridge.” The doctors turned to him, eyes widening. One scientist was bent over a table with some kind of red spray. He was aiming it at a blue and white shield with a star in the middle.

He had no other role. But something dragged the words out of his mouth: “He knew me.”

Their faces closed. He could see them running protocols in their heads. Reactions for when the wipes wouldn't take. They knew his job was to:

  * listen
  * understand
  * execute
  * return



Never be curious. He wasn’t confused, or even concerned when they came at him with the rubber mouthguard. He bit it, not wanting to make them force it into his mouth.

He showed them he was obedient, true to them and theirs. He lay back,

  * letting the pain and his own screams deafen him,
  * stretching out every moment of remembrance, every hint. 
  * But though he leaned into the pain, let it wash him away, inside it were the echoes of a word: 
  * “Steve?”



—

It was the flash of red-and-black Bucky caught out of the corner of his eye that made him grab the wheel over Wilson’s hands, swerving them into a barely-open section of highway on the overpass. The movement made the Winter Soldier slip, catching the top edge of the car rather than landing straight on it, so when Wilson slammed on the breaks he went flying. He didn’t roll, he skidded. It was a movement Bucky recognized.

Steve was wearing the fake shield. It was spray-painted it black with a big red star over it, but it was the shield. Bucky’s heart clenched in his chest before he shoved the door open and sprinted towards Steve.

He could hear Natasha starting to follow, could imagine Wilson arming up, but all he could see was Steve, only his eyes visible over the muzzle. His eyes. They sent all his adrenaline cooling to fear in his veins even as he ran. 

He hadn’t grown up with large predators, not the way some of the Commandos had, with black bears in the woods or sharks off shallow coast. But he’d spent time in the forests of Austria. Laying perfectly still on a branch for hours and he'd watched his share of foxes and deer and rabbits. 

One dusk, moments after leaving his tree, he’d looked up to see a lone wolf, staring at him from a few arm lengths away. It had stood stock-still, eyes focused on his. It had the most neutral eyes he’d seen. Like it could run or it could fight, but that decision was entirely up to him. It knew its role, it was just waiting for him to choose his.

He’d taken a step back, eyes going down, every inch of his usually-flimsy self-preservation coming online, making him look like tough-prey and not a rival predator. 

As he sprinted towards him, Steve stood, watching him with wolf-eyes. 

He ran forward, knowing that to some extent, he was following the plan. He’d distract Steve, he’d get him down, he’d protect the others. He knew they’d built that plan around the fact there was no other way this was going to go.

Steve’s eyes were on him as his hands pulled knives from behind his back. Bucky got to him as the blade was coming down, catching it on his metal arm, letting it skitter and scratch across the shape of it. He twisted his arm, wrenching, catching Steve off guard.

They wrestled, Steve getting behind Bucky and shoving his face into the asphalt, scraping along it. Bucky rolled, getting his legs around Steve’s hips and forcing him to his back. He climbed up the man, catching blows on his shoulders and back, face numb from the abrasions. He got a hold of his arm as Steve struggled.

Yanking him over sideways with his weight, Bucky locked his arm, keeping him pinned between his legs, face away. He could feel the stretching in the Winter Soldier’s arm as he fought, kicking to get out of the hold Bucky had on him, but he kept choking, choking him out.

He heard Steve’s arm give, a crack at the soldier. His heart split. Steve didn’t make a sound, teeth bared, face frantic. Across his body he could see Nat holding his entire arm down with her body-weight, aided by Wilson. She had a pen-knife and was sawing at something—a black band, a tracking device?—around Steve’s wrist. When it popped off Bucky caught a flash of red, before Steve got enough leverage to throw him off, busted arm and all. 

Steve tried to rise but Nat threw him back onto his back. Then she straddled him, said: “Sorry, Captain,” and stuck him a syringe, in the center of his chest. Bucky had to look away. He turned back as she finished pushing the plunger in and Steve’s body went limp.

His face was relaxed, nearly peaceful. Bucky raised his hand, intended to lay it on Steve’s forehead. 

“Barnes, we’ve got to go,” Bucky glanced up and his other senses slammed him all at once. The scent of the air, the crumbs of gravel in his unprotected knees, and the of military-grade sirens. Steve’s back-up was coming.

—

They got out, barely, Bucky carrying Steve over his back through the sewers and Sam playing distraction up above them, diving and weaving around the news ‘copters and their Blackhawk cousins.

Steve was heavy, but his grip never faltered. He could see the horizon of their lives getting nearer with every step towards the SHIELD bunker.

—

“You’re not putting him in a fucking cell,” Bucky yelled, backing up, putting his body between Natasha and the mobile surgery table where he’d just laid Steve down. Bucky’s face was still dripping blood and he was favoring his shoulder. 

“Bucky, he’s not safe—“

Nat was trying to make the best of Fury’s order. She didn’t know what she would have chosen in his place, but it was Fury’s to decide, and he had. They needed to be separated.

Their stalemate broke when Steve woke up and started choking Bucky from behind.

Face close to his ear, arm around his neck, he whispered:  
  
“You’re my mission.”

Bucky feebly pushed at Natasha as she came after his attacker with another tranq. As it sank into Steve’s neck, Bucky managed to say: “You’re my friend.”

—

Bucky awoke to the soft beeping of machines, starched sheets and a flickering overhead light. He could feel from the air he was deep underground. He flexed his back and his shoulder seared pain. _Hold still, you jerk._ He winced, and a scrape down the side of his face made itself known as did the deep, fresh bruising on his neck. He tried to hold very still.

“You can’t kill yourself for him.” Natasha’s voice rose from his left, and he cracked his swollen eye to look at her. She was messing around on her phone, fingers moving fast, face blank.

“He’s might not be the kind you save. Steve was. But him? He’s going to have to find Steve inside himself. It will take work.”

“I’m not afraid of work.” Bucky said, voice horse. “And neither is he.” He raised his hand to his throat, touching gently. He felt a rinse of coolness run through his veins at the delicacy of his damaged skin.

“What if he’s afraid of you?” she asked.

“We’ll get through it.”

Natasha paused, and then said quietly: “You may need to show you trust him, before you actually do. You’re not as hurt as you should be; there may be something there.”

“When you had to, how did you get out?”

She kept her eyes down, but he thought she’d turned off her phone’s screen.

“I had to grow myself back. I sewed fields with bullets and reaped corpses until I had earned the right to be human. Having an in with SHIELD help me stay out of jail, got me safe houses, but I would have killed them without them. It helped that someone was there to show me there were things they could never take, because they just weren't things they cared about. My tells changed, but my favorite flavor of fish didn’t. My hair and body and hands all changed, but I still swayed when I heard Lena Horne.”

In a quiet voice, she continued: “Clint was there when I left. I was his mission. He took me to a safe house, dropped off their radar, and played me every song Horne ever wrote, fried me mackerel, fought with me and read with me. I was unmade and he let me lean on him while I regrew myself into being a person, not just their thing.”

“He didn’t kill me.” Bucky said. “And he kept the shield.”  
  
“That might be enough.”

Bucky didn’t reply, letting the droning of the machines suck him those last few inches under.

—

They didn’t manage to keep him long; probably 24 hours, most of which Bucky was firmly sedated. Once Bucky could stagger and rip off the IV, he made his way to the cells. Natasha followed him, her glare protecting him from interference as his vision narrowed and his steps faltered. She said:  


“He slept in the cell, and when he woke up, he was different. I think he’s starting to remember.”

Bucky nodded, and kept staggering. He made it to the cellblock and then the cell where they were keeping Steve. He leaned heavily on the table under the wire-lined window. The shield, with much of the black spray paint scraped off, lay alone on the table.

The form in the corner of the cell looks nothing like the body Bucky knew. From what he could see, he was keeling on wide-spread knees, his head a painful weight on his arched neck, every line squeezing another ounce of tension from his weary frame. His blood streaked across the top of his blond hair, turning him into an unnatural strawberry blond. Bucky knew he caused that blood, and it bite a hole in his stomach.

He leaned against the wall as the guard got approval to let him into the room, the one door Nat’s glare wasn’t enough to get him through. His weight grated the metal of his arm against his shivery body, but his gaze never wavered when the guard confirmed he wanted to go in. He nodded. The guard communicated that back on his intercom.

He would give them a few more minutes. He heard them talking, but once he hear’s Nat’s voice he tuned back out. He knew he was going in there with Steve. The only question was if he was going to have to commit treason to get there. He hoped not, but he was ready.

Steve’s shoulders hitch; his breathing looks erratic. Bucky’s heart rips and he shifts his weight fully onto his feet. Enough waiting. He’s going in. As he reaches for the knob the soldier’s hand beats him to it, pulling the handle down for him and pushing the door in, aiming her weapon at the kneeling man.

“I cannot protect you from him,” the young woman in fatigues reminded him.

Bucky’s eyes never found to hers, just went irrevocably to the man in the corner. “You never could.” 

He shuffled forwards, favoring his shoulder. He heard the door snick shut and hiss latched behind him.

He stood there there, in the most peaceful setting they’ve seen each other in 70 years. Bucky felt his exhaustion in a rush. He couldn’t think where to start. He couldn’t speak. He stepped forward and Steve’s entire body flinched, but he ducked his head again, looking through ragged hair before schooling his face down. His eyes were wild, feral, trapped. Terrified.

Bucky’s heart won’t let him breath, it was pushing its way out of his wrists and the soles of his feet and the side of his wrecked throat. He needed air and there was no way he’s leaving this room to get it. He wheezed and folded to his knees, a good 7 feet from the other man. His eyes stayed fixed, giving whatever comfort that contact could while not moving an inch closer.

Steve’s voice was a gift, terrified though it was. “You can’t be here. I’ll kill you. I can’t fight it forever.”

“You won’t.” he said. Nothing in his body believed it, but if he was going to tell one lie for the rest of his life, it would be this one.

“I _will_.” Steve insisted, voice breaking on the verb. He whispered: “ _Please_.”

Bucky couldn’t think through the pain, and his muscles didn’t have the strength to bull through it. 

“I trust you.” He said. 

And with that, he laid his head on the concrete, body slacking though it knew it was not safe, eyes drifting. The last thing he saw before sleep took him totally was Steve’s terrified face, and an outstretched hand.

—

A sense of self-preservation flipped Bucky’s ears on and kept his eyes closed, even as his brain tried to determine if the crunch of movement had originated in his sub-conscious or reality. He heard it again, canvas against concrete.

He felt a body near his, and a gaze seeking his. He let the chill of the concrete remind him where he was. He wasn’t sure he could still get up, the pain in his arm from the hastily-removed IV and the bruises from the fight too fresh. He eased his eyes open and came to the sudden appreciation that Steve was crouching, face directly over his, eyes staring down at him.

This was closer than they’d been since the war, outside of trading body blows. He could see the shape of years, of frosting and defrosting in Steve’s rangy hair and lined skin around his eyes. 

He saw cold where there had always been acres of warmth. The man’s brow was furrowed, eyes moving minutely, searching for something. He could see his eyes widen at the contact, but Steve didn’t move. He saw a hand coming towards his face through his peripheral vision and he steeled himself. At this range, it wasn’t like he could get away if he wanted to.

Steve’s hand came down on Bucky’s face, patting him like a child trying to see if an object felt the way it looked. Then he let it settle on his skin, curving over half his mouth, his entire cheek, a thumb just under his lips, covering his healing scrapes from the asphalt. His thumb pulled the skin down below his lips and Bucky obediently let his mouth fall open. He lifted his own hands, and though Steve tensed when he saw the movement, he didn’t back away.

Bucky laid his hand on Steve’s arm, wrapping his hands around, feeling the movement of the tendons as Steve moved his hand over Bucky’s face. Steve leaned back, sitting tailor-style, but keeping contact with Bucky’s face. Braving the potential and clear consequences, Bucky reached up to trace a single finger through the crow’s feet beside Steve’s eyes. 

He expected a flinch, or a jerk away at the least, but instead Steve closed his eyes and something like bliss rose up on his face. He sat back further, and Bucky followed him, his hand covering Steve’s entire cheek. He could smell him, unwashed and unfound. He sat up, bracing his arm behind himself and bringing their chests nearly together. He let his hand drift to Bucky’s neck, keeping his thumb on that unbelievable jaw.

Steve curved his head into the moving palm. His hands left Bucky’s face to cradle his hand between his own, raising it up to look at it, thumbs pressing between the muscles and tendons and bone of his exposed fingers.

Bucky realized in a rush that they were breathing together, and when he slowed his, Steve matched him, inhale for inhale, and exhale for exhale. He slipped his thumb against the other man’s jaw, seeing it in the low light of the cell. 

A dozen nights during the war they had no excuse for one tent, but Bucky stumbled into Steve’s long after lights-out. He’d fall, hunched up over his knees, shaking. After that first night, they hadn’t had much of a chance to be intimate; Bucky’s memories were too much to let that kind of guard down. Steve curled over him as Bucky’s shoulders heaved and his hair hid his shame-covered eyes. He’d slid his fingers into his hair, stroking it back from his face. Bucky flinched from the touch, but buried his head deeper into Steve’s olive-covered shins. 

Steve had hitched a finger under Bucky’s arm and pulling him up flush. He’d negotiated the bag open and hooked Bucky’s leg with his ankle. He turned towards him, but Bucky couldn’t turn his back, not even on Steve, not even half-asleep and desperate for normality.

Steve turned onto his back, and then with a nudge on his shoulder, turned again until his back was to Bucky. He lifted his head and Bucky’s arm had slid under, torso to back, hips together, an ankle tucked between Steve’s. He hadn’t slept well on the camp cot, but as Bucky’s shudders had eased at each squeeze across where his arm covered Steve’s chest, he felt contentment connect his sternum to his spine, his knees to his thighs, his arms to his shoulders again. All with a warm surety this was what was needed of him, that Steve had him.

Steve had curled himself protectively around the arm Bucky left on his stomach those nights, both hands on the one hand he had access to, and they’d match their breaths. Bucky had escaped before first light but the next night-terror and the next and the next, he spent a little longer in Steve’s tent. 

One day, Steve left him to handle a briefing alone so he could corner the quartermaster and request one of the larger tents, one he carried and set-up and simply put Bucky’s things in at the next stop.

The surety they shared in this cell, that matching of breaths, that felt familiar to Bucky. But this terrible, distant face, eyes so curious and so unknowing, it was terrible. But Bucky kept contact, hoping he could speak a lifetime of trust through his eyes. Hoping Steve needed this in the same ways he’d needed his arm during those nights.

Slowly, Steve’s hand moved down to his wrist and elbow, finding the holes where until recently there had been tubes and wires. His fingers graced over those red marks, not pressing in, not making more pain, but not soothing either. At least not intentionally.

Bucky desperately wanted to stay awake, to be here to respond, but the soft touch of the other man’s hand was too much, it triggered too many memories of cold nights and the small movements Steve would make with his hand on Bucky’s as they huddled together to keep warm. He could feel the tide of sleep pulling him under. 

—

He dreamed he was sleeping in a cave, where the floor was ice and the wind was howling like alarm bells. Maybe he’d escaped the drift after all? The ground kept moving and he was knew the cave would break apart, collapse into the heart of the glacier out of which it was carved and bury him in ice for decades. The movements slowed, but the ice was rougher. He rubbed his cheek, and the icy floor became a leg, Steve’s leg, and he wondered when he’d found a time they could both be out of action long enough to catch a catnap. He brought his hand up to pillow under his cheek, and felt it scrape along the concrete.

That sensation more than any of the others brought him awake, that and the low sound coming from above. Steve’s breathing was uneven, head tipped back against the concrete wall, eyes clenched shut, breathing hard between his teeth. His hands were clenched by his sides, but he’d moved Bucky’s head onto his bent knee. His muscles moved under his shirt as he twitched and fought something. He wasn’t asleep, but clearly neither was he fully present. He curled his body forward, arms coming around, over Bucky’s head, like he was defending them from an attack.

Slowly as he could manage, Bucky pulled himself back. Steve made a small groan, hands collapsing in his lap, loose, even as his breathing kicked up and up and up. Bucky feared what the wrong touch could provoke, so he shifted closer along the wall until his shoulder was brushing Steve’s, providing contact without blocking his escape routes.

Steve shuddered when the warmth of their bodies began to mingle, and Bucky risked raising his good arm up and over Steve’s shoulders. As soon as the pressure from his arm touched Steve’s shoulders, he began to collapse, eyes still closed and shaking, Bucky guiding him until it was his head pillowed on Bucky’s lap. Bucky felt a powerful peak of protectiveness rise through him and a thrush of grace above at having Steve so near, so much closer to safe. 

He looked at the ragged blond hair and ventured a finger-tip’s brush, then a bit more, combing it out and bringing some order. He didn't know how long he sat as Steve curled and shook in his lap, but it was long enough for their breathing to synchronize and his body to calm.

Finally, Medical made their case to security long and loud enough to force her to open the door. Bucky tried to wave them off before Steve awoke in his lap, but it didn’t work. They began to move inside and he kept waving them away, hissing:

“He just dropped off. Give me an hour more.” The doctor shook his head, and said:

“Our intelligence says they never meant for him to be away for more than 24 hours. He’s going through withdrawal, and that doesn’t even get to the conditioning.”

“If he sleeps another hour, that could help him heal, right?”

The doctor stared at him before nodding reluctantly, so when Steve started to stir with more intention he retreated. Steve turned his face towards Bucky’s torso, and lips unreadable from the viewing window he said:

“Stay.”

His tone was muzzy but his intent was not. Bucky’s head jerked down and he promised:  
  
“I will.”

Steve nodded, masking it as twitching his head into a more comfortable position, and then, finally, he began to sleep in ernest. Bucky watched him, slowly pulling his tags out from under his shirt and looking at them, running his fingers along the smoothed-out letters, before tucking them away again.

He awoke a bare 30 minutes later, tense, jaw locked, eyes running under his eyelids. Bucky was sure he’d just pulled himself from a nightmare, but then the next moment Steve was sliding away from him across the floor, the his hands over his own face, body tense. Bucky sat up gingerly, and watched, body panicking.

His own harsh breathing was barely covering the low moan Steve let out, hands coming up to cover his own face. The man’s body was wracked by shakes and Bucky yearned to crawl over and just gather him up into his arms, make sure he knew he was safe and unhurt and unhurtable. But he could neither make nor keep that promise just now. He needed to know Steve wanted his help.

He asked the question he didn’t want to know the answer to: “Do you want me gone?” 

Steve’s eyes jerked up, raw and panicked. Bucky took that as a “No”. Steve continued to look into Bucky’s face, hand reaching out, frantic and pained. Bucky opened his hand and inched forward, until they were within touching distance. For the barest moment, Steve didn't make the contact, and they waited, an eternity of air between them. Then his hand was enveloping Bucky’s.

A sharp tug later and Bucky’s entire chest was pressed to Steve’s, arm around the back of his head, hand buried in his hair. They sat there, pages folded together, as the Steve gasped into the angle between his shoulder and neck.

They sat that way until Steve’s breathing calmed, but soon after, the minute came when Bucky had to let Medical in. He waited until the doctor opened the door then shifted to kneel directly in front of Steve, blocking his line of sight. He cupped his face in his hands:  
  
“You need to be calm. I will get you out of here, but if you attack the guards it will take longer. Please, _please_ , please, do this for me.”

Steve didn't disagree outright. Bucky took that as a sign of progress and walked past the waiting doctors. “You will not hurt him.”

He waited until each member of the team nodded, and then walked out.

He came back as soon as he could, with 3 pillows a sympathetic nurse had shoved in his arms from the supply closet, along with a thicker-than-regulation blanket. _Kindness in unexpected places, huh Buck._ He’d held his fingers up to his lips as he did it, but there’d been a smile in there. Then he rushed away. The war for the heart of SHIELD was still unfinished, but Bucky had his own war to fight.

He didn't ask the doctors leaving Steve’s cell how he was. He deserved some form of privacy, but he desperately wanted to know. He would just have to ask Steve.

Bucky stepped inside the doorway as he heard the door hiss shut behind him and saw the crisis in front of him. Steve wasn’t kneeling in hari-kari pose, but he was curled in on himself, knees to his chest, head against the wall, silently speaking. The blood was gone from his hair. Bucky dropped the pillows on the ground and and moved to kneel in front of him. He leaned close and heard:  
  
“Not him, not him, not him, not him,” Over and over as a mantra. Bucky reached out, hand hovering for a moment before slowly pressing to Steve’s shoulder, still covered by the stealth canvas they’d captured him in. Bucky’s thumb pressed into his collarbone through the rig, and felt Steve shift under his hand. He looked up and caught Steve’s ice-blue eyes, fearful and seeking.

“What’s not him?” Bucky asked before he could stop himself.

“I wouldn’t.” Steve said, “I wouldn’t kill you. I refused, I tried, I _tried_ to refuse, but they, they,” and his eyes screwed up and he jammed his head back agains the hard concrete with a sickening thunk. “They _took me away._ ”

Bucky grabbed Steve’s hands, thumbs tucking themselves into the curves of his palms, “You _didn’t_ , Steve, you stopped.”

Steve’s derisive snort ripped into Bucky’s chest.

“ _You_ stopped me.”

Bucky didn’t mean to raise his voice, he really didn’t, but he needed Steve to be clear on this, as he stared at their gripping hands: 

“No. You could have killed me. You didn’t. You pulled your punches, you didn’t shoot, the first time we saw each other. You never aimed for any major organs, you didn't go after any of my teammates in ways they couldn’t survive. You saved me from you in every way you could, fighting an unwinnable battle until you could get backup.” 

He took his eyes from their hands to look into Steve’s eyes: “And some part of you knew I would be your backup. You held out until I could help you get yourself out. _You did it._ ”

Steve huffed and turned his head, clearly not interested in discussing this anymore. Bucky gently released his hands and leaned over backwards to catch the corner of his pillow-pile.

”Come on,” he said, “No need to be uncomfortable. Ease on over.”

Steve’s look of scorn lifted a giggle out of Bucky’s too-tight chest. Here, here would be the epic fight. Not about the containment or the guilt or the 70 years of miraculous life leading to this impossible reunion, but the paisly-printed hospital pillows.

Bucky made himself a bit of a pillow nest with one big side cleared for Steve, and laid down. Eventually, Steve gave in, and ducked his head onto a pillow. They slept.

—

Bucky sat up. Every muscle group currently communicating with him, and a few that were just coming online, objected violently. Steve was awake, eyes hooded, watching his every move.

Bucky leaned away, telegraphing his movements and stretching his arms above his head. When his sleeve rode down, his metal arm flashed in the low light of the cell.

Steve’s eyes widened, and he slowly moved his hand to intercept Bucky at the elbow. Bucky let him maneuver his arm between them, let him trace the joists and joints with a callused fingertip. Steve’s eyes were distant, but his hands moved over Bucky’s arm like water. Bucky leaned his head back against the wall, eyes tight closed. He hadn’t been touched in a while, is all.

After long, torturous, wonderful, minutes, Steve placed his hand back in his lap. Bucky glanced over, and Steve was mirroring him, head back on the wall, his face this expression of mixed misery and hope. It was a familiar look—Bucky could feel the same one curdling on his own face.

“This sucks,” he burst out, and Steve’s head shot around. “This sucks. I don’t know what you know, what you don’t know, what you want, what you don’t want. I don’t even know if you think of yourself as Steve or something else. I don’t even know what medical care you need. I just,” Bucky slammed his head into his hands, fingers twining and pulling at his hair. It was longer than he’d usually let it get, too caught up in the struggle to notice.

Steve’s face blanked, and his mouth dropped open a bit. His tone was flat, when he said:  
  
“Ask a question.”

His voice was low, soft, harsh. It sounded everything like Steve, and nothing. Bucky felt like he was standing at the edge, and just needed to leap, or back away. Either would change things.

“Any question?”  
  
If it were possible, Steve’s face closed off even more. Bucky quickly interjected: “Not any question then.”

“What medical care do you need?”  
  
“The doctors here are providing me compounds to counteract those that were put in me before missions and to restore nutrients. I was allowed to eat solid food, but not provided any before this mission. This was not the usual protocol.”

Bucky had a wardrobe of nightmares those first 3 sentences were going to populate, but not right now.

He thought for a moment: “How about: What is your name?”  
  
“Steve Rogers.”

The relief Bucky felt was like a waterfall in the desert.

“When were you born?”  
  
“Unknown.”

Bucky’s eyes sagged at that, pressure behind them getting stingier.

“Where were you born?”  
  
“Unknown.”

And, either because he hated himself or he had to know, “Who am I?”  
  
Steve quirked his head at him, eyes distant: “Unknown; you’re my mission; you’re my friend, Bucky.”

Steve shook his head hard, hair slapping him in the face and rustling on the concrete. “It’s not clear, I have 3 overlapping files, they don’t,” he shook his head again, like the filing cabinet would settle if he just smacked it hard enough.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky said raising his hands, “it’s ok. How about: are you hungry?”  
  
Steve paused, face pulling its blankness on again.

“Unknown.” Bucky grimaced. “Well, I am, and you should eat too. I can’t imagine your metabolism’s calmed down any.”

He stood, turning towards the door. Then he paused as he felt a hand on his calf. He looked down and over—Steve wasn’t looking at him, but there it was. A broad, pale palm resting around his ankle. Not holding him there with anything stronger than hope. Bucky leaned down, and slowly as he could, laid a hand on Steve’s head.

“I’m not leaving; I just need to go to the door to talk to them. You can hear everything I’m saying.” He settled his fingers a little more closely to Steve’s scalp, and heard a sigh. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d missed being touched.

Steve’s hand opened, coming back to rest on his knee. He pulled himself into a kneeling parade-rest, hands locked behind his back, knees spread far apart, head bowed. Bucky dropped to his knees, hands fluttering in front of Steve’s face. He looked up, eyes calculating:  
  
“No, no, Steve, you don’t—I’m going to get you out of here, but you’re not a prisoner, not really. It’s like, when they had to hold drunks overnight until they calmed down? We’re just figuring out where you are, trying to keep you and everyone else safe.” He winced, sure he was going to offend Steve, but then something in his shoulders loosened. Maybe he was realizing that Bucky wasn’t going to try to trap him; maybe he was feeling safer not having someone stand over him.

“You can stand when I open the door. If they get nervous, they just have to remember that you’ll have to go through me to get out, and that’s not going to be a problem, right?”  
  
There was the slightest duck of Steve’s head that Bucky took as an assent and he stood again. He strode to the door, and rapped on it.

The panel slid open, and—it was Nick Fury’s voice that came through.

“Status?” he asked, and there was an interest, an almost curiosity in his voice Bucky would not have expected.

“We’re doing fine in here, just getting hungry. Got any food supplies to share? Water and a change of clothes wouldn’t go amiss either.”

“I’ll put Hill on it,” he said, and there was a pause, like he wanted to ask something but knew there were twice as many ears as he’d prefer to hear it. After a moment, he just said:  
  
“Got a timeline?”

“Not yet; I’ll let you know when I do.”

Fury’s face set; not the answer he was looking for. Bucky thought he was going to push, but no, he didn’t, he just nodded tersely and stepped back. The panel slid shut and Bucky turned to find—Steve still kneeling, that terrible tenseness in his shoulders. Like he was expecting a blow; like he wouldn’t protect himself from it; like he thought deserved it.

Bucky reached his flesh hand up to adjust his metal shoulder—it dug in if he didn’t calibrate it regularly, and these past few days hadn’t been conducive to standard maintenance.

“How did that—“

Steve’s voice was rough when he cut himself off, his gaze sharp: he was looking right at the shiny metal.

He stood, eyes fixed, and walked towards Bucky. Bucky took a gut-deep breath and held still, letting Steve circle him, evaluate him, eyes moving over his shoulder, how it attached. He flexed his wrist and Steve’s eyes zeroed in on the ways the overlapping parts intersected and moved, mimicking a natural wrist.

“Howard’s boy—do you remember Howard Stark?”  
  
Steve shook his head, eyes darkening.

“A friend of yours, during the war. An asshole, but he managed to make this kid, he’s the one in the Iron Man suit.”

Steve nodded, confirming: “Iron Man: the U.S. government’s anti-revolutionary tool.”

Bucky cocked his head, grinning: “Not how Tony would put it,” he said levelly. Bucky flexed his fingers, and this time Steve reached down, intertwining and raising their joined hands to his face to examine the joints.

Bucky’s voice got quieter: “I fell. I was fighting Hydra, the ones who got you, who took you. We were, uh,” and he paused, trying to find a neutral way to say this, “We were fighting them together. I got hit by a blast when I was holding your shield.”

“ _My_ shield?” Steve asked, eyes flicking to the door.

“Yeah, yours, Steve.” Bucky resettled his weight on his feet. “When we get out of here, you can have it back; well, a fake version of it. The real one is probably still wherever they found you.” Steve nodded and returned his gaze to their hands.

“I got hit, I couldn’t hold the weight, couldn’t brace it the way you could, and I got thrown out of the train.” Bucky took a beat, eyes full of white, lungs full of the choking cold.

“I fell; we were in the Alps and I fell into a snow-drift. It preserved me—I had some of the same chemicals you did, the things that made you a Supersoldier, and they helped, but I mostly froze like one of those frogs we used to find in the East River and heat up in the tub.”

Steve’s eyes never left their hands: 

“Was it frost-bite?” 

He rubbed his own shoulder with his opposite hand at the word, and Bucky suddenly had a horrible flash, an image of Steve cold and shivering, freezing. He pushed the thought away, but couldn’t stop the shiver that worked its way up his spin and down his arms—both of them.

“No, there was a rock-outcropping just under the snow. It sheared my arm off. They found it when they found me, took it in for testing, but never could get it to reattach. I guess we’re not like starfishes after all.”

Steve nodded, but there was something slow in his gesture, something that spoke of pain. Bucky reached his hand up, his flesh one, and covered their hands.  
  
“I’m ok; I’m more than my hand, and this one works fine.” Steve nodded again, but it was jerky. Like it hurt him to do it.

He turned away, dropping their joined hands, eyes going distant. There was a knock and Steve jumped, putting the wall at his back.

“Room service!” Sam’s voice carried through the opening panel. Steve shuddered and raised his arms, partially like he was defending himself from a blow, partly like he was preparing to attack. Bucky raised his hand, warding him off, keeping Steve behind him.

He could see Sam’s hands raised. His eyes were a little wide, but when he called out, his voice was steady: “I’m Sam Wilson. No hard feelings, I’ve seen men lose themselves in wars they didn’t start.” He paused, and took a breath: “I’ve seen them get out too, out of their heads and out of the fight for good. It’s a possibility open to those who work for it.”

He leaned forward a bit, so his face was outlined by the window: “But that kind of work takes calories. Am I ok to open up this door and pass through these delicious MREs, or are we going to have a problem?”

Bucky started: “We’re not going to have a problem,” just as Steve was saying: “You are not within my mission parameters.”

Sam watched them, eyes keen, but then nodded and motioned to the guard on the door. He moved behind the door, and it opened with a screech. There was Sam, eyes wary but mouth smiling, holding—not MREs.

“How did you get those—aren’t we still at war?” Bucky asked, and moved forward to take the 4 bags of McDonalds. He set them down by the door, standing up only to see Sam turn to the table behind him and drag over a tray of large drinks, and then a second one. 

Bucky’s eyes and heart were full. He set the drinks down inside the door as well, and looked to Sam with a question.

“The nurses want to take a look at you, but I’m holding them off. They think you need to take off the arm to do your maintenance thing, even if you’re not going to talk to them. Thus,” and he pulled a small black bag over from the table where it had been sitting beside the fake shield: “Tools.”

“Seriously, how did you get this stuff?”  
  
“Didn’t you hear? We won. Nat, Tony, Clint and Bruce got to Pierce while he was still evil-villain monologuing and Nat shot him between the eyes. Fury’s back at SHIELD, working the Hill like nobody’s business. The heli-killers never made it out of the ground. Tony’s pissed they misused the reactor tech, particularly after he ‘so generously sold them all the anti-alien, anti-villain weapons they could ever need.’” Sam’s quote fingers were definitely sarcastic. Bucky stifled a grin.

“And the burgers?”  
  
“The thanks of a grateful nation.”

Bucky heard Steve huff behind him. He nodded to Sam saying:  
  
“Thank you. We appreciate it.”  
  
Sam passed over a quick smile. The door hissed shut.

Bucky turned, and Steve was working his way back to his feet. He pressed on his knee, rubbing it as he pulled himself to standing.

“Are you hurt?” Bucky asked.

Steve didn’t answer. Bucky stepped forward, and then stopped.

“If you’re hurt, we can get you medical care.” Steve’s entire body stiffened, and Bucky froze in sympathy. “Nothing unless you want it; just don’t be in pain without telling me.”

Steve gave him a confused look and Bucky stepped forward, eyes skirting over his friend’s covered body.

“Are you hurt?”  
  
Steve shook his head, but Bucky started to take in the way he was holding himself. He put a bookmark in that chapter and closed the book; they could circle back after eating something.

“Soup’s up, got a preference?” He started digging into the bags. Hamburgers and chicken nuggets and a square-fish sandwich. French fries and boxed apple pies and extruded tater tots.

He looked over his shoulder from his crouch to see Steve’s confused face.

“I don’t; I haven’t eaten in; I don’t usually choose.”

Steve’s voice was hesitant, smaller than he’d sounded even when he’d taken up a third of the space he did now.

“Why don’t we put them out and you pick whatever smells best?”  
  
Without waiting to see his reaction, hoping by turning his back he would make Steve feel less aware of the oddness of his lack of preference, he started unpacking the paper bags onto the concrete floor.

There were 16 boxes in all, which was way more than he ever would have ordered. Thanks of a grateful nation, indeed.

He started to set out the sides when a hand bumped his and he jumped. The skin was cool, but soft. He tried to get a hold of himself, but when Steve persisted, reaching into the bag in his hands and pulling out a box of tater tots, Bucky couldn’t help the grin that flickered on his face. Steve set the side down, and reached in again, and together they laid them all out. Last were the drinks, 4 dark sodas, 3 light ones and an orange juice. Bucky would have to ask for some water, and a bathroom break in the near future.

Fast-food arrayed properly, he glanced to Steve to see what he thought of it. Hands no longer full of cheap American food, his eyes looks a little lost, a little disrupted.

Bucky reached out to grab the first burger he saw.

“I’m going to start on this one—it’s a quarter-pounder with cheese.”

Steve’s hand hovered and hesitated. He went from one to the other and back again.

“It’s your choice.”

Steve sat back and stared at the burgers, glancing at Bucky. Bucky waited and felt like cheering when Steve chose a Big Mac. It was a choice, not just a mimic.

He ate it in a few bites, as Bucky tried to stuff his burger into his mouth to keep up. Steve reached past him to get another Big Mac, and Bucky followed his pattern. He edged the sodas over towards Steve.

“Do you remember what you used to eat?” he asked.

Steve started to answer when his mouth was full. He paused, gulped down soda, and swallowed. He ducked his head, and for a moment Bucky could see nothing but his smaller, younger self. He saw him at his Mom’s table, starving after not getting enough to eat for a few days, but still trying to keep to his manners, still trying to keep it together.

“I only remember until my last, treatment, and then memories that relate to things I’ve seen since then. You; SHIELD; the District of Columbia. It’s all in bits and slices before that.” Bucky’s head was starting to hurt.

“You don't have to tell me,” he said as he reached for a carton of fries, “but what did your last ‘treatments’ consist of?”

Steve’s voice was flat and Bucky regretted asking. “It was in a cell just like this one, with guards like this one, and food through a slot. I was always watched. When they wanted to treat me, they would force a rubber grip in my mouth if I didn’t bite it myself. I remember my arms bruising and healing and bruising again from the restraints. They used some kind of electricity, and it hurt. I remember the sense of losing everything, over and over.”

“But you could remember some things?” Bucky asked.

“Sometimes,” Steve said, “I think I could remember more after sleeping.” He sat back on his haunches, clearly done with this topic. Bucky did so as well, casting a sidelong glance at him, before switching topics.

“Are you full?“ he asked.

“I am fine.”  


They both looked at the line of burger wrappers, with few full burgers still standing.

“You don't have to stop out of politeness. I ate with you as a kid and then in the army, I know you could eat your weight in burgers if left to your own devices.”

“I don’t need more food.”

“It’s ok to eat past need, just for taste or until you’re full, sometimes. This food is just going to go bad. If you’re still hungry, eat.”

Steve knelt down again, hand jerkily hesitating as Bucky sat again beside him.

He picked up another burger and unwrapped it to take a bite. His face flushed for a moment in pleasure, and he chewed slower, feeling his way though the meal. Bucky watched and waited as Steve took a big, lasting swig of his soda. Then he set it all down and began to move again, sweeping up the wrappers into a pile and making it smaller by crushing it in his hands, reducing evidence of his presence.

Bucky’s eyes caught on Steve’s forearms and held. A switch flipped. He tried to push it back down, but the rush of wanting roared over him. He missed those arms from his memory, the ones he knew he could trust. He wanted them back and his veins burned with it. He knew he needed to get back in the game before Steve noticed his lapse, but all he could think of was a memory of Steve’s skin, the thickness of his thighs, and the sweetness of their shared breath. With a jerk, he finally pulled himself out of it, breathing slowly so as not to attract attention.

Thankfully, Steve hadn’t noticed. Bucky was cold with shame and tried to redirect.

“You’re not a prisoner here. You said this was like the cell where they kept you. You can leave.”

“Really?” Steve asked, pitch somewhere between sarcasm and confusion. “Then why is SHIELD keeping me here?”  
  
“They may have questions for you, questions about Hydra, but if you didn’t want to answer them, I would make sure you didn’t have to. I’m on your side first.”  
  
Steve’s voice was quiet, low enough it was possible the microphones in the cell couldn’t pick it up.

“If I wanted to leave their custody entirely?”  
  
“I would make sure you could do it; no questions asked; immediately. I would probably have to accompany you, but that would be it. You will never be a prisoner as long as I’m alive.”

Steve looked him hard in the eye for a moment and then said slowly and deliberately: “I want to leave.”

Bucky called out, loud and clear: “Can you get Nick Fury down here please? And Nat and Sam.”

There was no answer, and for minutes he and Steve held each other’s gaze. Then he heard the comm:

“The Director is here.”

Bucky said, low, just to Steve: “I’m going to get us out. Give me a minute.” Steve nodded, and went to kneel, head down again.

Bucky walked to the door and it opened. Sam was standing there, as was Director Fury and Nat.

“I will vouch for him, but we need to leave.” Bucky said.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Nat asked. Sam cut in:

“He needs to know we’re different from Hydra. He can’t trust anyone here until we show that, and in a very basic way that gets past his trauma. This is it, this is us showing him we trust him.”  
  
Fury looked between the two of them, and then stepped back and to the side holding the door open with his body, making the path out clear. Bucky turned to Steve, to see him still kneeling. He walked back and knelt to touch his shoulder. Steve held in the startle response, barely.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Steve nodded and stood, then walked out ahead of Bucky. Bucky picked up the toolkit for his arm. Standing just past the doorway, Steve made eye contact with Nat, Sam, and Fury, nodding to each of them. Then he turned to the table beside the door and picked up the shield. With a glance over his shoulder to make sure Bucky was following, he started jogging up the corridor. Bucky heard Nat on her comms ensuring the doorways would be open.

Once they hit the open air, Steve started to run.

Steve never tried to disappear, just moved at a steady pace. He zig-zagged, following the flow of traffic, but after a few blocks Bucky saw a pattern. He was trying to make his way west. Bucky kept the sun in his sights and followed, letting Steve move a bit further ahead, giving him some space. Steve wouldn’t let him though, glancing behind him to make sure Bucky was still there, he moved more slowly until Bucky caught up, keeping him a few paces behind.

When he caught on, Bucky allowed himself a tight grin and rolled his shoulders, then set in for the long haul.

They made it out over the Potomac and into Virginia, which in some ways felt more like a city, since they were in prime government contractor territory. The apartment buildings were huge and much more ostentatious than the ones they’d seen in most of the District. They kept running. Steve kept ahead, and when Bucky tried, somewhere in mile 15, to pull up to run beside him, he kept moving faster until he fell back again. But he never tried to ditch him entirely.

Another 5 miles and they were finding themselves running through long patches of woods between smaller and smaller farms. Steve began to head north, and Bucky was glad. It showed there was some plan, some direction. If they had to run all the way to Brooklyn, he would do it, but even superheroes’ thighs chafed after too much unexpected running.

Steve began to slow around mile 30, though he appeared not an inch more tired than he’d been at mile 3. But he let Bucky come alongside him, and together they ran through the afternoon forest, disturbing deer and forcing birds into flight. The ground began to trend up, and Bucky realized they had reached the low and rolling hills. Maybe they might even be mountains, but Bucky felt the mountains on this coast were always too small to feel right after surviving the Alps.

As the sun was setting, Steve started to move more like he was scouting rather than jailbreaking, and Bucky wasn’t surprised when he found a stream and stopped moving. He stood over the water, staring into a pool, and Bucky joined him. His breath no longer humming in his ears, he could let the silence run its way down his spine. It had been years since he’d been so far from people. He turned around, getting his bearings.

_Yep, this sure is a forest._

“Hey, Steve, any idea where we are?”

No answer, but when he turned around Steve was crouching, looking at something on the ground. He pressed his hand into the dirt, and then, a hatch popped open. Bucky jumped back, hands going behind him for a gun that no longer sat holstered there, even as his shoulder cried out at the movement.

Steve looked at him—maybe the pain had slipped between his lips?—before making his way down the steeply descending stairs.

Bucky looked around, but saw no better options. Hoping this wasn’t some elaborate way for Steve to fulfill his mission, he followed him into the dark.

—

It didn’t stay dark for long, as Steve moved low halogen lights on the ceiling flickered to life. Bucky kept waiting for gunfire, shouts, something to indicate this was a bolt-hole for someone else. Nothing came.

“Steve, what is this place?"

“A Hydra bunker, disused since the 1970s. It’s where they took me, after…”

Bucky absolutely didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence tapering, but he made himself ask.  


"After what?"  
  
"I came here, in the 1960s. They hurt me after I deviated from a mission. They did it here.”

“Shit,” Bucky said, “We absolutely do not have to camp someplace where you have bad memories.

Steve shook his head, “This place is a known quantity. If I know I’m here, I don’t have to worry about my surroundings. I know what’s happening, and it’s—mission secured. I can handle other things, other inputs, if I know I’m safe. I can try to figure out how much I know about you, and how safe you are with me here, since you insist on putting yourself in danger by being around me.”

Bucky—well, he hadn’t thought Steve was trying to take care of himself in that sophisticated a way. He’d figured he was running scared, but this, this spoke of an effort to get back to workable parameters, like maybe he wouldn’t be dragging the man back to health, but running beside him towards it. Sam was right, maybe this departure was the way forward.

“Alright, Steve, I trust you,” and he let him take them around winding corridors that he thought were burrowing them deeper and deeper into the mountain. Eventually the single corridor ended in a large, low-ceilinged room. The lights came on to show a single terrible chair with a dark space that might be another chamber on the far left. Everything was concrete and steel, except for the cracked leather of the padding on the chair.

Steve stopped, eyes fixed on it, breathing tripping and growing thicker in his throat as his knees slowly collapsed.

“No, no, _no_ ,” he started to murmur, arms moving behind his back, knees braced, head down, “No, no, _no_ , no, no,”

Bucky’s vision narrowed, red-tinged. He strode to the chair and, without planning to, knelt and started ripping the wiring at the base. He got the base plate free, then twisted the bolts out of the floor. He started yanking at the frame.

A glance over at Steve showed he was on his knees. His eyes hadn't left the chair. Bucky finished pulling the last remnants of material tying it to the floor away and began dragging it to the long hallway, metal screaming on concrete. Steve stayed still, except for his gaze, which followed Bucky and the chair until the very last moment.

—

He came back and Steve was trailing his fingers through the fresh grooves in the concrete. He knelt and slowly raised his hand to Steve’s neck. He settled it there, and Steve stilled under his hand.

“I remembered,” he murmured to the scarred floor beneath his hand.

“I figured,” Bucky replied, and Steve shot him a look out of the corner of his eye.

“I remembered different, this was stronger, like I was there. Like it was happening again.”  
  
Bucky sat in front of him, keeping his movements slow and obvious. “It can come that way sometimes, when the memory is of something particularly hard. It’s like reliving it. There’s ways to get past that, but it takes time.”

“You want to talk about it?” Steve shot him a look out of the corner of his eyes, all fear and incipient betrayal.

“We won’t then, not ever, if you don’t want to.” Bucky looked around.

“Did this place have bunks, when you were here?” Steve nodded and let his shoulders relax a bit. He pointed over to his left.

Bucky stood, and when Steve didn’t hold onto him, he walked over to a long, narrow room with a waist-high window looking over the much larger open space where the chair used to sit. 2 bunk beds, mattresses stripped and propped against the wall. He could imagine there once was a lab in this bunker, where scientists could watch their experiment’s pain from their sleeping room.

He nudged a bed with his metal hand and it in no way moved. Probably too heavy to be worth evacuating with the rest of the equipment. He walked over and prodded a mattress on the wall. It felt no worse than many they’d slept on in the army, so he hefted it over his shoulder and laid it on the bottom bunk. He repeated with each of them, to give Steve the option of variety. He looked in the inset cabinets and pulled out shrink-wrapped sheets, still in their original 1970s packaging with men and women in loudly patterned shirts on the labeling.

He unwrapped them and shook out the first set. Before the edge touched the ground, a pair of white hands caught it. He stumbled back, but it was Steve, holding the sheet with him. He stepped towards the first bunk and Bucky had to follow, or lay the sheet on the dusty floor. Steve kept walking, then maneuvered them so they set the sheet on the bed. He started tucking it in at the edges.

From the bits of rubber falling out, Bucky assumed this had originally been fitted. But they’d been in the army and knew about hospital corners.

In the quiet, Steve and Bucky made the other beds, found and dressed the pillows, shook out and laid down the blankets.

Then they stood, eying the each other.

“I don’t remember when I learned that.” Steve said.

“Do you want me to tell you?” Bucky asked.

Steve sat on the bed tucked against the wall, head ducking low to avoid the upper bunk.

“Yes.”

And Bucky did, telling him about his Ma and his Pa, going from leaning on the opposite bed to sitting on it, to laying sideways on it. Right around when he told him about the first set of sheets they bought together—“Pink, because they were a third the price of the grey ones”—he felt his eyes drift closed.

—

He awoke to see Steve squatting in front of him, eyes intent on his face.

“We really have to stop meeting like this,” he said. 

Steve said: “Move over.”

Bucky did not, instead sitting up and swinging his legs down.

“Why?” he asked. He wasn’t so awake that the prospect of finally sharing something closer to a bed didn’t appeal to him, but he was more interested in Steve’s longterm wellbeing over any kind of personal gratification.

Steve looked confused at the question and gestured mutely at the bed, moving towards forward. Bucky held up his hands and Steve stopped, facing falling, confusion warring with distrust.

“I don’t know what you want or need from me. I’m making it up, trying to give you the space you need to get as better as you’re going to work yourself into getting, but I have no idea what you want from me.”

Steve took a breath, and started speaking low and clear: “I don’t, remember everything. I remember your face, I remember that you were safe, like a homebase. I remember that I tried to kill you, and that you didn’t fight to win. I remember slivers of my old missions; I think I may come to remember more of them as time goes. My handlers were concerned that they hadn’t put me back into Deep Sleep before sending me after you. I think that may have had something to do with how they manipulated my memory. Perhaps it will break down in time.”

“But, the reason I ask about the bed, is I feel safer with you where I can touch you. I’ve woken up cold and hungry nearly every of the dozen nights I remember, but never when you’ve been near me. I’m, I’m not looking for anything else.”  


His voice was flat, which didn’t build Bucky’s confidence much. But as he was gearing up to say no, they shouldn’t share a bed until Steve could remember more, a realization flew through him. This was the first time Steve had asked for anything.That thought covered his mind, and he leaned towards accepting. But he couldn’t, not just like that.

“But what is it you want—what would make you feel safest?” He gestured to the fully-made bunk above him as an option.

Steve shook his head, not like he was disagreeing, but trying to shake his thoughts into a semblance of order.

“I want,” he said slowly, “my back against a wall. I want you in front of me. I want you close enough to touch. Facing away from me?” Though this ended in a question, Bucky nodded.

“Ok.”

Steve nodded and Bucky got up, waving him in. Steve crawled in, limbs clumsy and clothes cumbersome and Bucky wondered how tired he was, and what kind of rest they had ahead of them. Neither of them made any move to get undressed. Though Steve had not done the same, Bucky removed his guns, and his knives, laying them within reaching distance of the low bunk bed. Steve’s eyes followed him.

“Here,” he said, scooting his back against the stone wall, arm up, holding the sheet away from the bed and his body.

He felt Steve tense as he stooped in front of his body, briefly blocking his exit out of the bunk bed, but when he sat and gave him an unobstructed exit he sighed and relaxed again. Bucky lay down carefully balancing on the edge, keeping space between their bodies. He wanted to let Steve make that first touch.

For long moments, he didn’t. Then, breath stirring the hair at the back of Bucky’s neck, Steve asked:

  
“Can I hold you?”

“Sure.” Bucky said, hoping the longing didn’t bleed all over his words. He felt Steve’s shoulder relax around his, and a broad arm looped over his ribs. Steve’s fingers wandered over his metal arm, tips of them tracing the grooves, evaluative.

“Does it hurt?”

The darkness helped keep the words close, quiet.

“No, though when we wake up, I will need to do some maintenance. It will start to ache otherwise.”

“Do you need to do it now?”

“Nah, it’s fine. It’ll keep.”

They settled into silence after that.

He let his ribs expand, feeling the weight of Steve’s arm on him. His sensors told him his hand was still moving up and down his arm. He leaned into the claustrophobia of being held, letting it overwhelm him, come up over his head like water in a pool. A couple of breaths later, he figured he could hold his breath under that water and let his body begin to sink into the mattress. He slid his elbow back, only to feel a startled twitch from behind him.

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” he murmured to the air in front of him with a wry smile.

“I can’t ever remember doing this.” Steve said. Bucky’s heart shattered.

“We’ll just have to play it by ear then,” Bucky said levelly, and then let the silence settle for a few seconds. He shifted, and found Steve shifting as well, finding the hollow spaces in each other’s bodies.

“I don’t know if I should tell you this.” _It’s ok, you can tell me._ “But we used to do this, in Brooklyn, then during the war.” He would stick to that, wait to tell him. Bucky’s voice was far away when he spoke though, full of late summer sunlight.

Steve moved his arm forward so Bucky could lay his head against it, and he took that as permission to continue. The silence settled and they fell asleep.

—

There’s a long, dark room. In another time, another life, the man would have recognized this as a meat-packing plant. A place where dead things hung, unsaved in all the ways that mattered. Now, it was his last sight before he was put into the Deep Sleep. He didn’t struggle; he’d learned not to struggle Sleeps and Sleeps ago. But he did crane his head around, roll his eyes as far as they could go to the sides and above himself, curious even as he was being put down since it was one of the few times he was less observes. He wanted to know where he was, even if he had no idea who he was.

The doctors shuffled him back into the standing container, air thick with the smells of chemicals and preservatives. They hooked up tubes into his body, and he let them, grateful that these were more gentle than the previous test runs. They’d practiced doing this under a time pressure, under an imminent attack, under an armed incursion. Those had been times where he’d had to stand, pretending to be frozen, as he watched them run through their drills, testing their protocols. He feared they’d forget him. Or worse, they would let him starve in this standing-coffin as they studied him through the thick, veiny glass. He’d seen corpses along this long, dark hallway, mouths open in silent screams. He thought he could hear those screams echoing in his own coffin, but seamed his lips and bit down to seal them. Nothing good could possible come of making noise now.

They had let him out after those drills, and as he felt the waves of toxic fog trickle around his bare ankles, then engulf his knees, he felt a childish hope that this too would be called off as a test. Anything but the mind-numbing sleep and the terror he knew would follow, but could never fully remember.

Then those three clicks, the ones that never came during a test-run. The sound of the three lines into his arms beginning to fill with fluid, begin pushing saline and whatever else they ran through him to keep him from becoming one of those screaming corpses. Of course, the dark monkey in the back of his mind chittered, these chemicals could be poisons; this could be the time they kill him and leave him to rot, alone, and trapped. As the mist covered his eyes and stole his few remaining thoughts away, he thought that maybe those deserted and desiccated corpses weren’t dead, but were the newest and most advanced form of Deep Sleep; that there were men still trapped in them, and those screams were their living wills, awaiting their use by the state.

—

Steve Rogers awoke, knowing who but not where he was; and this was so much worse. 

He began to fight, fighting the tubes in his arms, those inside other parts of his body, fight the metal box. He could see men in white coats scurrying ahead of him through a warped pane of glass, but none are helping him. Enemies then. Hydra? He didn’t see any insignia to be certain.

He threw himself against the door in front of him, but the hinges budged not a fraction. He pressed again, more softly, but his thrashing had already attracted unwanted attention from the enemy. They were coming—and they were armed. Steve tried to arrange himself, bracing his foot against the back wall of the coffin so he could push out. When they opened the door, he made it, a few feet, before the cattle prod hit the bare skin between his shoulder blades.

He hated this, and in the shocking moment when his legs went out, he remembered a dozen times this had happened before, how the concrete felt when it ground into his knees, how his muscles locked and shook with the force of the electricity, how much he wished he had something to cover himself with as he writhed against the floor.

The cattle prod stole the breath he had within him, forcing it between his teeth as he hunched over himself on the floor, he remembered night after night after night before what his mind supplied were Deep Sleeps. He also remembered days filled with blood. He fought the electricity and fought his memories until they knocked him out with the butt of a Kalashnikov.

—

Bucky was off the bed at the first hit, getting into a fighting stance to face the attack. But it didn’t follow him. He hit the low lights and saw Steve’s eyes were tight closed, thrashing in his sleep. Bucky backed up against the wall and let the pain filter through, digging his tags out from under his shirt and gripping them until they dug into his palm before hiding them again. He felt his back under his shirt, wincing at the stretch. He was going to have a whopper of a bruise over his kidneys, but no permanent damage from what he could feel. He slid down the wall and tried to think.

He was pretty sure it wasn't safe to get near Steve, not if he was going to strike out again. But he knew from personal experience he’d rather get woken up than let a nightmare sink deep into his brainstem. He called out:

“Steve. Wake up.”

Nothing. A bit louder this time.

“Steve, you need to get up. It’s a nightmare.”

He heard the sheets still, the thrashing stop.

“It’s ok, you’re safe with me.”

No movement now, and from the angle Bucky couldn’t see if his eyes were open. He risked standing and moving slowly closer to the bed. 

Steve was lying on his back, eyes open and tracking his movements. His face was wet from sweat and Bucky could see faint trembling in his arms and legs. He dropped into a crouch, getting himself at eye-level with Steve. Steve rolled towards him, up onto his side.

“You had a nightmare. You’re safe.”

He gave a small nod.

“Would you like to go back to sleep?”

Steve shook his head.

“Alight, why don’t we see what there is to eat here.” Steve nodded again and moved to get up. Bucky backed up too quickly, twisting his back. He hissed and put his hand under his shirt to feel the growing bruise.

He’d closed his eyes in pain, and so was startled when he felt another hand join his. He opened his eyes and saw Steve beside him, lifting his shirt to see the bruise.

“Did I do that?”  
  
“Yes.” Bucky said. “You were asleep.”

Steve’s face fell. “I was dreaming of the place they used to keep me; I think I used to wake up and remember everything.” Bucky looked hopeful, drawing more comfort than was seemly from the touch of Steve’s hand on his bare skin.

“I don’t remember everything now.”

Bucky tried to keep his face still, but Steve saw his react and said: “I do remember more. I remember Ma and Pa, and Pa going to the war. I don’t remember you,” a pause, “yet.”

“You remember being Steve Rogers?”  
  
“Yes.”

“That’s really good, Steve.”  
  
“I’m not sure I believe it though, I remember more of being the Winter Soldier. Those memories are, clearer.”

Bucky nodded. “You don’t have to tell me, but what do you remember more of being the Winter Soldier?”  


Steve dropped his hand from Bucky’s skin. He immediately missed the contact like shoes in a blizzard, but he stepped away. Steve could talk later.

“Let’s get some food.”

They found actual MREs with expiration dates in the 2020s that still smelled like MREs always smelled. They ate until they were full. “Not nearly as good as the McDonalds though, right?” He said, cracking a grin.

And Steve quirked a tiny smile back at him. They explored the bunker before doing a full food inventory. There was enough MREs to last them about a month, and bunker’s plumbing was still in order. Bucky bet it fed off of someone’s home system, or else it would have fallen apart in the decades since this bunker was last in use. They’d also found a bookcase, mostly full of mysteries and thrillers, with some magazines from the ‘70s. Steve stood, fingers moving over the spines of half-a-century of books.

Bucky’s heart melted and he was half a step towards Steve when he stopped himself. Steve’s eyes were wide open, but he’d held his ground.

“Do you want to—“ and Bucky held out a book to Steve.

“Alright.”

They sat on the concrete, backs against the wall. After half-a-page, Bucky spoke up:  
  
“We can talk, if you want. I’ll answer any questions you have. I just, don’t want to push.”

Steve nodded and quirked that tiny smile again.

“Can I think about it?”  
  
Bucky nodded. After the first hour, Steve got up to trade his book in—“Their Russian accents were terrible”—and moved to sit down again.

When he did, he sat flush with Bucky, arms tight against each other. Bucky held in a sigh, but couldn’t stop himself from leaning a bit into the touch. When he fell asleep, he woke to find Steve had rearranged him to be lying in his lap, and had a hand in his hair. Bucky lay like that a long time, just breathing.

They chose the same bed to sleep in that night, though Steve looked worried and arranged himself carefully around Bucky’s back, tucking his hands into themselves. His back had grown stiff throughout the day, but he wouldn’t complain or draw attention to it.

—

Bucky woke with Steve’s arms around him, and he took a moment to breath in the animal bliss their pressure brought him. He felt the rising tide of guilt and uncertainty, but fought back, insisting on feeling the full mix of joy that Steve’s presence brought him. Then he took a breath, steeling himself for what changes he could expect this morning after a sleep’s healing.

He crept a leg off their cot and levered himself to his feet. Steve was still asleep. The soft sideways angle of the low light erased the fine lines that had crept around his eyes in the past 70 years. There were only as many as Bucky would have expected in 7 years of aging for a normal man, but enough to show the passage of time on his formerly timeless friend’s face.

His hair was still raggedly chopped, but there was enough for Bucky to see he could bury his fingers in it, if he were welcome to. He wasn’t sure of this morning’s welcome, so he withheld himself. He took a safe step back from the bed, and called out in a low voice:

“Steve, time to wake up?” Steve’ eyes shot open, conducting a threat assessment too fast for the human eye to see, but Bucky had known it was coming. He’d kept his palms open and his body relaxed and unguarded.

Steve rotated to sitting, then stood, moving towards Bucky. Bucky got his arms moving in time to catch—a hug. Steve’s head was slow to follow the movement of his body around Bucky’s, but when it drifted down on his shoulder, Bucky felt like he’d dived into a warm spring.

“Morning,” Bucky said, and Steve nodded his assent. “Good morning, Buck.” Bucky’s heart clenched; that was the most familiar tone he’d heard since the fall.  
  
He pulled back a bit, eyes going to Steve’s.

“Do you remember more?”  
  
Steve nodded and replied:

“I remember up until, late 1938. I remember Ma and Pa dying, I remember being sick and us talking about getting a place together. Did we?”  
  
Bucky nodded and raised a hand to brush some of Steve’s hair out of his eyes. They might need to get him some scissors soon.

“We did. It was a few blocks from your old place, 5 story walk up. It had great light in the summer.”  
  
“I don’t remember it,” Steve said, frustrated. “But I do remember,” and his face buckled before he pushed it into Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky’s back twinged, but he held on. Steve’s body didn’t stiffened at once, but in stages, from the outside-in. First his fingers slide into the fabric of Bucky’s shirt, digging in until the poly-blend creaked. Then his arms tightened, pushing a bit of breath from Bucky’s lungs. Then his legs stiffened, bringing him to a full inch of additional height over Bucky.

He drew in a ragged breath, but spoke clearly.

“My time with the Red Room and Hydra is getting clearer. I remember more of what I did, and what they did to me. Did you know they used me in propaganda films? Called me a ‘Captain America look-alike’.” He huffed a pained laugh. “Only the Kremlin’s inner circle knew the truth. They loved it, had me at their parties.” His voice was bitter like poison and Bucky smoothed a hand down his back. 

“I didn’t know. I don’t know much I haven’t told you. I can tell you what I know, if it would help?”  
  
Steve nodded, then paused.

“After breakfast. God, I hope whatever we ate during the war was better than those things.” He said this with a watery smile, but Bucky took it for what it was and smiled back, big and true.

“Not by a long shot; they’ve always been terrible.”

Steve’s smile solidified and he clapped Bucky on the shoulder.

“Also, you may think you’ve been getting out of caring for that arm, but you’re wrong. Breakfast, maintenance, then we’ll find us some more of those mystery books.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bucky, casting a sidelong glance at Steve to see his reaction.

He froze, and Bucky worried he’d gone too far, but then he nodded and walked forward. “I hope I remember being a Captain tomorrow. It’s getting old, having files on what I’ve done but not memory of doing it.”

“I hope so too.”

—

Bucky awoke to an arm under his head, and fine hair under his fingers. He for a moment enjoyed not trying to remember what decade he was in. But then the springs of the bunk bed made themselves known and he opened his eyes with a groan. There was Steve, staring at him in the face. The freak.

Bucky knew it wasn’t nice or acceptable to think things like that about Steve while he was recovering, but he excused himself the impoliteness because it was early, he was tired, and Steve had always been a bit of a weirdo.

“Morning,” he said, and Steve nodded, staying quiet. Bucky inched his body away, in what space he could create between their bodies on the bed, in case he had changed his mind about his comfort-level while sleeping. Steve followed the movement, hips swaying towards him. Bucky didn’t know if it was conscious, if it was a come-on or a skin hunger or seeking comfort, but he knew he had no interest in dealing with this before ingesting calories. He backed up those few crucial inches and eased his leg down to the floor. Steve caught him behind the neck and held him for a moment, his body akimbo, until Bucky finally looked him in the eyes.

“I remember the train,” he said, and Bucky’s diaphragm froze. Steve’s hand fluttered up to his face:

“I remember the months during the war. Everything up to when you—. I remember us.”

Bucky’s shoulders slumped together, putting pressure on his sternum, but he stayed half-propped on the bed. He tried to keep his voice neutral.

“And what do you think about it?”

“It’s so much to remember, so much happened, so much changed for me, for us.” He fluttered a hand between them but then laid it to rest on Bucky’s chest.

Bucky looked away: “I didn’t want to tell you, in case you never remembered. I don’t, I just want you to know I don’t have any expectations. I’m with you and I’ll help you, whatever you want.”

Steve nodded, eyes still distant.  
  
“I saw us after I found you in the factory, the way you shook, the way you couldn’t lie flat on hard ground, the way your skin…”

Steve’s eyes went hazy and Bucky remembered too. He raised his own hand and raised Steve’s palm to his cheek, pressing them together. He could smell his own smells on Steve’s skin; that was all he could hope for in a morning, no matter what happened next.

Steve pressed the pads of his fingers into Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky couldn’t keep his eyes open. He tried, he did try; he wanted so desperately to watch Steve’s eyes as he figured out the world around him. But he could do absolutely nothing about how good Steve’s skin felt against his yielding skin.

Quieter, voice distant and rough, he said: “I saw us when we lost Gary. I saw the fall of the city and the shape of the bodies under the snow. I remember the briefings where they wouldn’t let me take you. I saw the look in the men’s eyes when they realized what you were to me, the distrust and finally the acceptance and co-conspiracy.”

Bucky forced his eyes open a slit, and asked a question he didn’t meant to: “Do you remember Provence?”

To Bucky’s never-ending thrill, Steve’s face colored. He was _blushing_. Bucky was tickled inside but but kept his quiet, let Steve decide how he wanted to respond.

“Yes, I do. I remember,” and he threw a leg across Bucky’s, hooking him all the way into the bed. This brought his hips so close to Bucky’s that he squeezed his eyes further shut, and made himself think of terribly cold snow and autopsies and the Yankees.

“I remember,” he said, as he tightened the grip his heel had on the back of Bucky’s calf, “how you teased me for days until we found a hay loft we could keep to ourselves and set the rest of the men to patrol the far edges of the farm. And how I,” he dug he heel in again, lighter this time. They were so close they were sharing hot breath, “How I pushed you against the rickety farmhouse wall. And you loved it.”

Bucky shuddered at the memory. He’d forgotten this, that Steve could talk dirty. His breath didn’t get a chance to get back to business when Steve continued, mouth just next to his sensitive ear:

“And after we got you off—against the wall, pants around your thighs, mouth buried in my shoulder to keep quiet, to keep the patrols from thinking you were being strangled—you dropped, just fucking dropped, to your knees and got me out of my suit and swallowed me down. I don’t know how you even figure out the zippers on that thing, because they were not intuitive.”

He paused, and then everything in his body got less open, more sheltered. He pulled back up and away from Bucky’s body, and Bucky let him go.

“And then you fell.”

Bucky had been desperately avoiding initiating any kind contact, trying to let Steve drive everything. But at this, he curled into him, he tucked his hand behind his head, and found his wrist with his other hand, pushing it high and tight against his head. He wanted him to feel, no, to _know_ that Bucky was fine now. A limb down, but who at his age could expect to be intact.

He pushed their bodies closer together, to try to make real that he was here and safe. But Steve wasn’t feeling it. It started with a fine tremor in his leg, then is hand spasming and clenching on Bucky’s, and then a dry sob wrenching its way out of his mouth. Bucky wrapped his arms around him, trying to give what comfort he could, tried to wait it out.

This was emotionally taxing work, but not mentally. Bucky’s mind started to wander, as Steve guttered out but never loosened his grip on Bucky’s torso. Steve was remembering his life before he was found by the Red Room in orderly stages, but his life after in chunks and slivers. He couldn’t keep those two things separate for long, and though Bucky might be weak in the moment, he would stop them if Steve pushed towards sex. He just couldn’t do that with him until he had more of his memories back, until he knew everything and could decide for himself.

It’s not that Bucky wouldn't love to be back in the best parts of 1944. He would. But what Steve had been through wasn’t erasable. He’d have to integrate it somehow. Bucky didn't know if he could, even if he should, entertain any thoughts or ideas about a possible future for them until Steve was more healthy, and much more capable of determining his own course.

Bucky ducked his head into Steve’s shoulder, trying to improvise with the kind body contact that would most help.

When they finally got up to get breakfast, Steve walked over to where he’d laid the shield when they had first arrived, Bucky trailing behind. He looked at it, head cocked. Bucky leaned down and picked it up, flipping it so it was white-star-forward. He presented it to Steve. Steve took it, eyes serious.

He kept it in his lap as they ate, and spent the morning using Bucky’s maintenance kit to clean the last of the black and red spray paint off. When they went to bed that night, it was propped against the frame.

—

The morning Steve woke up remembering everything he’d done as the Winter Soldier was a nuclear sunrise. Strong, bright, beautiful, but also toxic. He woke up with his arms around Bucky, one under his head and the other around his waist. This had been their position since the first night in the bunker, and was so close to how they used to sleep that Steve’s muscles refused to tense. He remembered he needed to try to remember, and he did, letting his breathing and Bucky’s skin guide him, starting with touchstones in his early childhood, moving to their teenaged and young adult years. 

He had had a different filter in his mind for the war years, and then, he entered the time after the fall. He fully expected to find his memory like a partially exploded prison, lots of compartments, some open and some locked. But it was like an overnight tornado had blown down all the walls in his mind. There was still debris and everything was scattered, but it was laid out.

The torture.

The murders.

The deception.

_Natalia._

_Bucky._

_The Winter Soldier._

Steve gasped and yanked his arm off Bucky’s waist, clutching it to his chest, trying to breath through the worst of the visceral memories. Trying to think of himself as one person, trying to skim, not dive, into the memories.

But they sucked him under, the red hair of a target, the squeeze of clamps around his wrists, the sound of a refrigerator humming as it closed his body for business until Hydra needed it again.

_I’m going to have such trouble eating ice-cream after this,_ he thought in black humor before the pain of his memories wiped his face again.

_I can do this, I’m strong, I can do this._ It was a mantra he’d lived with his entire life, certainly kinder than the mocking words everyone but blood and Bucky had spat his way until the serum had many him too big to bully. Certainly kinder than anything his abusers had said in the Red Room or with Hydra.

He was starting to see a future full of choices now he could remember his past. As Bucky turned in his arms, he had a moment to breath in hope, to breath in Bucky’s smell, before forcing his eyes open and his voice to speak:

“I remember everything.”

—

Those were the words Bucky had been hoping-dreading-waiting for since they climbed down into this bunker; more like, since he first made eye contact with Steve over the Winter Solider’s mask. And he allowed himself a thrill of terror at what they might bring. What too much memory of a blessedly-unnaturally long life might mean for the man surviving them.

“Ok,” he said, “Talk about it while we get breakfast?”  
  
Steve nodded and uncurled his arm from his own chest. Seeming to think better of it, he tucked himself into Bucky’s body, hiding his face in his shoulder. Bucky could feel him breathing, and it sounded rough. His arm was tight, but carefully moderated, not trying to hurt or constrict, just making clear and obvious that they were both here, both safe now. Bucky slowly brought his hand up behind Steve’s head and trailed his fingers through his hair.

“I’ve got you, you’re safe.”

Steve snorted but stayed still, inching his knee between Bucky’s until he was hooked around him and there was no way they were getting untangled without coordination.

Half an hour later, a rumbling stomach made both of them break apart briefly and then laugh, the sound small and private between their intertwined bodies.

They ate in silence and then set about getting their books out. 

Steve read for a few minutes before putting his down. 

“I want to talk.” He said.

“Ok,” Bucky said, setting his book face down beside Steve’s.

Steve sat forward, crossing his legs and leaning over, elbows-on-knees.

“They kept me in the Soviet Union for the most part.” He said.

He told the story. Being pulled out, being grateful for the rescue before realizing what was happening. The terror of being frozen again between missions, the fear of the cold. Waking up knowing who he was, remembering everything, then being forced to forget again. He described what they did to make him forget.

Bucky tried to let it wash over him, doing Steve the courtesy of not imposing his responses on his retelling, but some of their early mind control techniques were, primitive. He felt nauseous. He held still. Finally, Steve paused. They’d gotten to the mid-1950s.

“I’d like to stop now.” Bucky nodded. “Before I do, do you have any questions?”  
  
Bucky paused, and wanted nothing more than to know the right thing to say, the helpful thing, the thing that would help Steve heal faster. Instead, he said:

“Do you remember giving me these?” for the first time since they’d been together in this century, Bucky pulled his tags out of his shirt.

Steve’s eyes were wide and he reached out his hand, grasping, before pulling it back in.

“I do.” he said. “You should keep them, but can I—“

Bucky nodded and crawled over to him, Steve catching his shoulder and clasping his hand around where Bucky held the tags. He opened his palm and smoothed the pad of his thumb over them.

“I do.” he said, eyes close to Bucky’s, and Bucky felt a swell of heat he forced back. Steve leaned in, and pressed his cheek to his.

“Sit with me?” he said after a few moments.

“Sure, yeah,” and they sat and read for long hours as Steve’s heart rate came down to normal and his breathing evened out.

—

It was another week before they left the bunker, but when they did, it was with Steve in the lead. It took more months, some careful sessions with Sam and some long days apart to think about their lives, but they slowly rebuilt and built anew.

—

A year later.

Bucky grinned from under his metal arm, Steve catching his breath and letting their combined hearts wind down.

“Questions, comments, queries?” Steve asked, not unsure, just conscientious.

“Nope, mind-blowing as usual.”  


Steve snorted and smoothed a hand down Bucky’s side, tucking his fingers under his hip and squeezing his ass. A few breaths later and Steve said into Bucky’s stomach:

“We’ve got that thing at nine tonight, right?”  
  
“We could blow it off.”

“Nah, Banner will never let us hear the end of it if we do.” Bucky nodded, but thought he’d rather get teased for a few weeks than leave this warm bed.

“I think,” Steve said before pausing, “That gives us time for one more round, after we get some calories.”

He got up, stepping around where his shield peaked from under the bed and set off to cut the bread. He smiled at the home they’d made together, a mix of old and new, gifts from friends and restoration projects they’d taken on.

Steve had quickly decided he wanted to continue their relationship where they’d left off, with some changes in the physical realm. It had been months after they left the bunker before they’d done more than make out. Steve wasn’t interested in receiving penetrative sex, and might never be. Bucky was beyond thrilled at how far he’d come and his evident happiness, and found something as small as a sex act not hard to go without. Together they had found a wide world of options beyond the standards. Steve’s metabolism had if anything gotten more voracious, so they’d discovered the calories needed to have superhero sex often required another meal; thus, sex sandwiches. 

That had become a running joke in the Avengers. Clint would ask about their sandwich count for a weekend and Natasha had taken to dropping off increasingly and improbably large sausages for alternative snacks. Bucky was just grateful Tony had been too distracted re-outfitting SHIELDfrom scratch to get in on the fun.

An hour later, Bucky found himself on his back again, a happy, golden man between his thighs. Steve kissed him hard and deep, pressing his head into the pillows. Bucky moaned, not so much at the excellent kiss but at the lengths of their cocks sliding together. He arced into the feeling and Steve grinned, slick and dirty into his mouth.

“What exactly do you want me to do to you?” Steve whispered.

Bucky moaned again, a bit higher pitched. He was in no way prepared to direct the proceedings, so he waved down his body expressively. Steve grinned and slid down, licking and sucking, hands carefully light on his sides. They’d discovered that since coming out of the ice Bucky had become more ticklish.

He kissed down and over to the soft side of his hip, cradling his face in the dip between his stomach at the swell of his thighs. Steve had closed his eyes to savor the taste and sensations of a writhing Bucky Barnes’ skin. He pressed one more deep kiss in, letting his tongue out while Bucky whimpered and then opened his eyes.

Full nudity had been tough for Steve at first. Some part of his brain associated it with what had happened to him, and made him feel uncomfortably vulnerable, unable to focus on sex. They’d spent weeks sleeping in pajama bottoms and some nights they still did, when the memories were too difficult. But right now, all Steve felt when he looked at Bucky’s dick was mouthwatering anticipation. He glanced up, savoring Bucky’s tightly closed eyes and hands fisted in the pillow above his head. He shifted just slightly—and then took Bucky down in one swallow.

The sound Bucky made had nothing to do with dignity, but they’d more than soundproofed the walls months ago. Steve started a punishing pace, fist at the bottom, sucking and licking and humming until Bucky slapped a hand down on his shoulder—

“Is this the main event, or should I, should I try to hold off?”

Steve kept his lips touching Bucky’s flushed head and said:   
  
“Hold off, I’d like to go inside you, if you’re up for it.”  
  
Bucky’s eyes rolled back and he hummed at the thought.

“Yeah, that works for me.”

Steve smiled and gentled his approach to his friend’s cock, kissing up the side and back down again, licking the thin skin above his balls. He reached a hand between his own legs and started an easy rhythm, matching that of his mouth on Bucky’s dick.

“Let me see,” Bucky said and Steve obliged, raising himself up and arching his back with his eyes closed, enjoying the attention. Bucky gasped and Steve smirked at the sound. He felt another hand on himself and when he opened his eyes he saw the other man sitting up. They kissed, and Steve jerked forward, dick flush against his stomach at the thought of Bucky tasting himself on Steve’s tongue.

Steve kissed him again and pulled away, gently pushing him backwards until he was lying on the bed again, legs spread.

“Toss me the lube?”  


Bucky nodded and reached over, dragging it from the bedside table. He handed it over and closed his eyes in anticipation. He rolled his pelvis but stilled when Steve put a hand on his hip.

He felt Steve’s hand on him, lube warmed from his palm, fingers slick and gentle as they touched his entrance. He focused on feeling open and heard Steve’s happy hum as he slipped a finger inside.

Steve laid down beside him, moving his finger, letting Bucky get used to the feeling and kissing his chest. Bucky started to feel his need building and gasped “More,” to Steve’s answering chuckle.

Steve added a finger and Bucky breathed through the stretch and the tension until he felt himself open up. He hitched his legs higher and the press got easier, smoother.

At Steve’s look, he nodded and the man added a third finger. Bucky let that settle for moments between whispering: “Now, I need it now, please, Steve, please.”

Steve gently pulled his fingers free. He coated himself with lube, stroking quickly to get ready.

He leaned over Bucky, arms braced, Bucky’s legs around his hips. “Ready?”  
  
“Yes, yes, please, yes,”

With a smile Steve started to slide in, Bucky gasping and moaning at the pressure and fullness of it.

“You ok?” Steve asked, and Bucky nodded, beyond words for a moment.

Steve leaned in for a kiss and started pushing in and pulling out, twisting to bump that spot inside him that lit his skin up like stars. They both curled into it, bed creaking and scraping across the floor through long-gouged marks. Steve hit that spot once, twice, a third time and Bucky tensed all over, entire body rocking and twisting with the strength of his orgasm. Steve enjoyed his partner’s bliss then threw himself into his final few strokes before coming, hot and sweaty and sating, deep inside Bucky.

Time meant nothing for long moments. Steve lay inside Bucky and at home in ways he couldn’t describe. Their tags pooled together on Bucky’s chest, Bucky wearing Steve’s old ones and Steve wearing replicas of the ones he’d lost to the Red Room. Their time was broken when Bucky’s cellphone dinged and he sat up on his elbows, fumbling for it on the bedside table. “Shit,” he said.

He looked at Steve and Steve started to pull out, the feeling throwing Bucky on his back. He chuckled as his friend twitched for a moment then he regained himself.

“The event? It’s only—“ Steve looked over at the clock, “Nine-fifteen,” he finished.

“We’re out of time.” Bucky said, rolling up and yanking his pants on over his still tender cock, hissing when he hit it the wrong way. He looked up to see Steve still splayed out over the bed, face suddenly serious. He sat up and pulled Bucky towards him, until he was standing between Steve’s parted thighs. The man who was and still could be Captain America looked up and said quietly:  
  
“No, Bucky. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> First, I love comments, they are my heart's blood. When I'm writing, I imagine comments on it, so make my dreams come true.
> 
> Second, thanks: I wouldn't have started writing this without beardsley's the ghost and the machine (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1475323). I have read so many amazing pieces in this fandom, you can find a bare few of my favorites in the bookmarks section, and if you've written something you think I should read, post a comment or come hangout with me on tumblr, where I'm jocarthage.
> 
> Third: I've worked with survivors of trauma, but am by no means an expert. If there's something in my characterization of Steve or Bucky you'd like to talk about, feel free to drop me an Ask or a comment. I took some deliberate and creative liberty with Steve's memory recovery, because at the end of the day, I already wrote a heart-wrenching 60k fic about how awful PTSD is to live with this year and didn't want to do it again. I only have so much metaphorical blood to bleed on my keyboard.
> 
> Fourth: I've read a few Captain America comics, but clearly I did a mixy-matchy with canon. What can I say, it's fic.
> 
> Fifth: Did I say thanks? I feel like I need to say it again. Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and thanks for being an awesome person.


End file.
